Object-Oriented Philosophy The Noumenon’s New Clothes

OBJECT-ORIENTED PHILOSOPHY

OBJECT-ORIENTED PHILOSOPHY The Noumenon's New Clothes P E T E R W O LF E N DA L E URBANO MIC

Published in 201'1 by URBANOMIC MEDIA LTD, THE OLD LEMONADE FACTORY, WINDSOR QUARRY, FALMOUTH TR11 3 EX, UNI TED KINGDOM © Urbanomic Media Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. BRITIS H LIBRARY CATALO GUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA A full catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-9575295-9-5 Type by Norm, Zurich Printed and bound in the U K by TJ International, Padstow www.urbanomic.com

CONTENTS Preface vii Introduction 1 1. The Lava that Dare not Speak its Name 1.1. Withdrawal 1.2. The Fourfold 1.3. Vicarious Causation 2. The Withdrawal of Arguments 9 13 17 23 27 2.1. Tools. Knowledge, and Distinctness 39 2.2. Heidegger. H usserl . and Kripke 79 2.3. Occasionalism, I ndependence. and Supplementation 97 3. Objection-Oriented Philosophy 107 3.1. Sense and Sensuality 113 135 163 3.2. Qualities and Qualia 3.3. What are Relations Anyway? 3.4. What are Objects Anyway? : On Ontological Liberalism 3.5. What is Metaphysics Anyway? 3.6. What Does it all Mean? 4. Speculative Dystopia 4.1. The Spectre of the Past 4.2. The Sins of the Present 4.3. The Horrors of the Future 209 299 327 337 3L11 359 391 5. Specious Realism 399 Postscript: Speculative Autopsy by Ray Brassier L107 L123 L133 I ndex of Names I ndex of Subjects

PREFACE

I have been haunted by a single question for the last two years ix or so: 'Why are you still writing this, Pete? ' Echoed by friends, family, and my own conscience, it has been a constant refrain. It seems that I am finally in a position to provide an answer­ to retrospectively justify the amount of time and effort that has gone into writing this rather unusual book, and to provide some context for those wondering why they should devote their own time and effort to reading it. The fact that this is my first book only exacerbates its eccentricities: it addresses a contemporary and perhaps fleeting philosophical moment. yet it does so by delving deep i nto the discipline's past ; it speaks of recent developments i n the world of 'Continental' philosophy, yet it often draws u pon 'analytic' ideas that are uncomfortably alien to that world; and above all. it undertakes a long and detailed discussion of a single philosopher's work, and yet it aims to show that his work does not warrant such serious attention. Why read, let alone write, such a n odd book? A brief explanation of its origins might shed some light on the matter. In August 2009, I began a philosophy blog1 as a way to work t h rough ideas outside the scope of my P h D thesis, which had begun as an exploration of Deleuze's metaphysics and u ndergone a gradual methodological regression towards Heidegger's question of Being. In doing so, I became i nvolved in a thriving forum for philosophical discussion , in which a number of other graduate students and fellow travellers dis­ satisfied with the stagnant state of Continental philosophy were experimenting with ways of changing things. It is perhaps unsurprising that this loose network of biogs had crystal lised around 'Speculative Realism' (SR)-a new and exciting trend 1. <http://deontologistics.wordpress.com> . "U ::0 m "T1 > () m

which had emerged onto the scene two years earlier. It is hard w 0 "" LL. w Cl: n_ to convey precisely what it was like to be i nvolved in this online community-if nothing else, it was permeated by a certain enthusiasm, a m bition, and i ntensity that offline academia seemed to lack. Although I never identified as a 'Speculative Realist'. I am certai n that the extensive online discussion and correspondence that S R i nspired was formative for my philo­ sophical development. It is i n this context that I first seriously encountered Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Philosophy (OO P), initially in discussion and then through his own blog ;2 and it is as part of this community that I witnessed the genesis and dissemination of Object-Oriented Ontology (000) . For our purposes, the most important encounters were a short debate with Harman himself and a series of debates with Levi Bryant.3 who had begun to develop his own metaphysics u nder Harman's i nfluence.4 It is i mportant to emphasise how much I gained from these debates. It is all too easy i n contemporary philosophical discourse to use the mere fact that one seriously disagrees with another's ideas as a reason not to explore the nature of the disagreement any further. But it is worth remembering that doing so can improve our understanding of the relevant issues and stimulate the evolution of our own ideas. This is certainly what I got out of exploring my disagreements with OOP/000. However-and this is where things took an unusual turn­ these theoretical gains did not come from uncovering useful philosophical insights or novel dialectical distinctions lingering 2. <http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com> . 3. <http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com> . 4. These debates are catalogued on m y blog: <http://deontologistics.word­ press.com/commentary/> .

beneath the surface. Quite the reverse: whenever I began to x1 address seemingly simple ideas that struck me as problematic, their flaws would turn out to run much deeper than was initially apparent . Time and again, I discovered that I couldn't pull on a single loose thread without unravelling the whole fabric. This implied a profound asymmetry between the amount of effort requi red to articulate the relevant ideas and that required to effectively criticise them. If nothing else, this asymmetry was productive: it forced me to sharpen my understanding of foundational concepts (e.g . , existence, relation, causation, etc.) and to address the methodolog ical issues u nderlying metaphysical debates i nvolving them (e.g . , what it means to talk about ' reality ' ) ; but it also consumed time and resources that could perhaps have been better spent elsewhere. Why then, did I persist? If I am honest . it is largely because I find it difficult to turn down a challenge. After our blog exchange had become somewhat one-sided , Harman made me an offer: either (a) summarise my objections in a single blog post that he could address more easily; or, bet­ ter yet, ( b) summarise my objections in an article in a formal publication (e.g . , in Speculations, a journal specialising in the nascent ideas of S R ) . At the time I replied that. despite having expended considerable effort addressing our differences online, I could not commit to writing an article for publication, which I considered would take far longer and would demand far higher standards of thoroughness. At the time, I had not read all of Harman's published books. Thus, without ruling out a more extensive engagement in print. I demurred from making any promises for the near future.5 5. Private correspondence with Harman (June. 2010). -0 "' m -,, > 0 m

Xii w u « LL w 0:: Q_ Harman's response to this was to withdraw offer (a) , on the basis that he had less to gain (and more to lose) from a blog exchange than I did. Admittedly, this irked me a little, not least given Harman's enthusiastic advocacy of the blogosphere as an appropriate venue for philosophical debate;6 but no one is obliged to respond to anyone else on the I nternet. That's just how it goes. I resolved to write an article when I had the time to do it properly. However, a short time later Levi Bryant referenced this exchange between Harman and myself in public, in a less than flattering way: At the risk of breaching blog etiquette, Pete was recently asked if he wouldn't care to carry out this debate in a formal setting. He responded by claiming that he holds his published writing to a higher standard than his blog writing and that we just don't have enough in common to have a debate. This raises the question of why Pete has obsessively and endlessly written lengthy posts on 000. striving to undermine our positions, while withdrawing from any sort of serious debate with us. Perhaps Pete should take the time to determine what our arguments are. rather than treating us as fodder or matter to run through the machine of his Brandomian-Habermasian mill from afar. 7 Now, it is almost certainly the case that his misrepresentation of my response to Harman was down to a miscommunication between Harman and Bryant, but this did little to assuage my irritation. As far as I was concerned , this transformed the 6. Cf. The introduction to G. Harman. L. Bryant. and N . Srnicek (eds), The Spec- ulative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (Melbourne: re.press, 2011). 7. <http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/knowledge- repre- sentation-and-construction-a-response-to-pete-part -2/ > .

offer to engage in a formal setting into a challenge to do so. xiii I resolved not merely to write the article, but to be as 'serious' as possible. I n short order, I bought the rest of Harman's books and began to sketch an outline of the essay. Of course, nothing ever quite goes to plan. I set out to expand the outline by presenting Harman's system and the arguments for it as clearly and thoroughly as possible, before moving on to a discussion of its deeper significance. This proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated : I spent an exasperating six months reading through all of Harman's publ ished books and as many papers as seemed relevant. only to real ise that there was no core argument. but rather a patchwork of argumentative fragments, rhetorical devices, and literary allusions. It g radually became apparent that a thorough engagement was going to require a great deal more reconstruction than I had originally thought. When it finally appeared in Speculations the next year, the article clocked in at seventy-six pages and did not get any further than reconstructing and criticising Harman's arguments.8 1 promised that a second half would be published in the next issue, but this too turned out to be overly optimistic. It took another two years of exegetical tangents and ramifying chapter headings before the original outline was completely filled in, and along the way the project expanded beyond the scope of an article and became a full-length book. If nothing else, it is by far the most exhaustive engagement with Harman's work to date. 8. P. Wolfendale, "The Noumenon"s New Clothes ( Part I)' in Speculations IV (2012), 290-366. This forms the basis of chapters 1 and 2 of the present book. It is worth noting that it has yet to receive a response, though I believe that Harman plans to address it alongside other criticisms in a forthcoming book. " ::a m ,, l> (") m

xiv w u <>: LL w a:: Q_ So, why didn't I stop at the article? I could simply have aban­ doned the project at this stage, and moved on to other things -there are plenty of other unfinished essays in my d rafts folder that would have kept it company. There were a number of reasons-not least my own stubbornness-but the most obvious was OOP's increasing popularity: not only were Har­ man's books now being read and referenced throughout the humanities, but the phrase 'object-oriented ' began to appear in calls for papers both in and outside of philosophy, while 'objects' became a new and supposedly exciting theme for art exhibitions. This ascendancy demanded thorough examination and criticism: a philosophy that attracts fol lowers on the basis of grandiose promises, theoretical or otherwise, should have its ability to deliver on those promises carefully scrutinised . Moreover, as OOP's popularity i ncreased , it began to domi­ nate online discussion, gradually narrowing discursive param­ eters and alienating many who had been actively i nvolved in the online S R community. The S R trend slowly transmuted into the SR/000 brand as Harman asserted himself as its spokesman, and the community's unique dynamic dissolved as a result. This gradual collapse demanded a proper explanation and remonstration: a philosophy that prospers by h ij acking discussion and stifling dissenting viewpoints, more or less deliberately, deserves to have its approach analysed and its strategies exposed . It thus seemed obvious that someone should address OOP and its influence directly, but the amount of effort required to do so properly remained highly asym­ metric and thus highly prohibitive. U ltimately, the amount of time I had already devoted to u nderstanding OOP put me in the best position to do what needed to be done. As such, this book is essential readi ng for anyone already familiar with OOP/000-whether they're tempted by its

tenets or suspicious of its spread-but why should anyone xv else read it? The two remaining reasons I persisted in writing this critique provide the best motivations for reading it: (a) that. though more difficult. a deeper exploration of OOP's flaws yielded deeper theoretical i nsights that can be applied elsewhere; and ( b) that. though seemingly idiosyncratic, a more synoptic analysis of OOP revealed that it condenses and exemplifies a number of important conceptual and sociological dynamics distinctive of contemporary anglophone Continental philosophy, giving us a unique opportunity to address the lat­ ter's problems in microcosm. Taken together, these transform the book from a simple exercise in philosophical critique i nto a more rou nded pedagogical project. This pedagogical bent is reflected in the overall trajectory traced by the various chapters: I begin by bracketing as many of my own substantial philosophical commitments as possible so as to focus on reconstructing Harman's metaphysics and its justification (chapters 1 and 2) , but this bracketing gradu­ ally recedes as I turn to the underlying conceptual themes motivating Harman's position (chapter 3) . However, rather than imposing a complete alternative metaphysics, my aim is to allow a series of constraints on any adequate alternative to emerge naturally-I exploit OOP's flaws to clarify the concepts of representation (3 .1), quality (3.2) , and relation (3 .3), and progressively elaborate some substantive claims about objects (3.4), metaphysics (3. 5 ) , and meaning ( 3 .6) . The section on objects (3 .4) provides the best demonstration of the above-mentioned asymmetry between articulation and criticism, being by far the largest and most technically demanding part of the book. I n it I locate OOP at the centre of a wider contemporary trend towards ontological liberalism, a proper examination of which requires detailed discussion of 'U ;u m 'TI :l> () m

xvi w u <( LL w "' (L both the history of ontology and the logic of quantification. Overall, the purpose of these clarifications, elaborations, and examinations is to enable the reader to learn from the various substantial and methodological mistakes instructively united in Harman's system. After this, the book turns to the historical and sociological significance of OOP (chapter 4): I integrate the insights u ncov­ ered earlier into a synoptic picture of the rise of correlationism after Kant (4.1), in order to describe the genesis of OOP/000 in the present (42) , and then provide a ' hyperbolic reading' of a future in which its influence is unopposed (4. 3). This is the culmination of a historical story that slowly develops over the second half of the book (34 3. 5 , and 4.1), and which encom­ passes the overarching dialectic of metaphysics, its split and parallel development in the analytic and Continental traditions, and the evolution of the Kantian noumenon within the latter tradition. This story forms the background for a sociological account of the development of the Continental tradition from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day (4.1), which explains the influence of correlationism, its imbrication with the project of critique, and the emergence of an opposing constructive orientation. Taken together, these analyses do more than let us u nderstand where OOP/000 has come from and where it is going-they give us a chance to take stock of where we are as a discipline, and what must be done if we want to divest ourselves of the pathological dynamics typi­ fied by Harman's work. The conclusion (chapter 5) connects this overal l trajectory with my concerns regarding SR and its sublimation into SR/000, and attempts to distil a moral from the book as a whole. This is perfectly complemented by Ray Brassier's generous and i nsig htfu l postscript ( ' S peculative Autopsy ' ) , which as far as I am concerned presents the last

word on Speculative Realism. To summarise, this book is a xvii critique of Object-Oriented Philosophy and what it stands for. but it is also far more than just a critique. During its long gestation, this book has benefited immeas­ urably from my discussions with Ray Brassier. Damian Veal , Jon Cogburn. Daniel Sacilotto. Dustin McWherter. N ick Srnicek. Alex Williams. Benedict Singleton. and Reza Negarestani. some of whom were gracious enough to provide comments on early drafts of the material that has come to compose it. It has also benefited from the comments of numerous more or less anonymous individuals who have read and responded to the informal engagements already mentioned . My parents. Chris and Dave Wolfendale, deserve a special mention for supporting me both emotionally and financially throughout the writing pro­ cess, with only my word that it has been worthwhile. as does my partner Tanya Osborne. without whom I might never have finished. Finally, I owe an immense debt to Fabio Gironi (editor of the original Speculations article) and Robin Mackay (ed itor of the completed book) . without whose incredible patience and careful encouragement it never would have appeared . u ;o m '1 )> 0 m

INTRODUCTION

A spectre is haunting Continental philosophy-the spectre of Object-Oriented Ontology (000). All the disciplines and groupings that have traditionally allied themselves with Continental theory i n the anglophone world are poised to g reet its manifestation: aesthetic theory and artistic practice, political philosophy and heterodox geography, Francophile post-post-structuralists and Germanist neoromantics. Who among them has not heard the siren song of OOO's litanies of inhuman objects ( menageries of stock markets and stock cubes, quarks and clerks, etc . ) ? Who among them has not begun to shrug off the oppressive, anthropocentric legacy of post-Kantian philosophy, bravely railing against the tyrannical correlationists of the Continental academy, the dreary techni­ cians of the analytic mainstream, and even the scientistic fury of its neo-Kantian heirs? Excuse the bombast, but there is a certain grandeur to the pronouncements regarding the emergence of 000 as a philo­ sophical movement that invites parody. Nevertheless I have every intention of taking these pronouncements as seriously as possible-perhaps even more seriously than they are intended . Graham Harman, the erstwhile leader of this most vocal faction of what was once, fleetingly, called Speculative Realism (SR ) , has often expressed a preference for what he calls hyperbolic readings of philosophies.9 The idea here is to imagine the relevant philosophy in a position of nigh-unassailable strength , s o a s t o reflect u pon what would b e missing from a world i n which i t had become dominant . To imagine a given philosophical tendency actually winning the discursive battles i n which it is 9. ' Delanda's Ontology: Assemblage and Realism'. in Continental Philosophy Review '11:3 (2008) , 367-83; Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Meta­ physics ( Melbourne: re. Press. 2009 ) , 121-2; Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 201 1 ) . 1 52-8. z --1 "' 0 0 c 0 --1 6 z

� engaged is to treat it with the utmost seriousness-to treat it as a genuine contender for truth, whose claims to truth are 6 sincere enough to be taken at face value. This is the kind of � 8 °' be treated , especially nascent philosophical movements that � claim to have wide-ranging implications and applications alike. f- respect with which any serious philosophical position should The aim of this book is to take 000 seriously, and to treat it with at least this level of respect. However, the hyperbolic method is surprisingly difficult to apply to 000 itself. given both the diversity and tentativeness of the commitments of its principal practitioners (canonically: Graham Harman. Levi Bryant. Ian Bogost . and Tim Morton) . There is most definitely a common rhetoric binding these figures together: an insistence u pon ontological egalitarianism, a rehabilitation of the concept of substance, and a pervasive metaphorics of withdrawal. But a deeper examination of each of these themes raises serious questions regarding the content of the shared commitments they stand for. There are disagree­ ments regarding just how egalitarian we must be (e. g . , what it is to say that everything is an object) , just what it means to return to a metaphysics of substance (e. g . , whether it is permissible to conceive it in processua/ terms). and precisely what it is to say that objects are withdrawn, and how that limits what we can know about them. These ideas obviously address a certain number of common problems. but it is not clear that they represent genera of common solutions that could be neatly broken u p into variant species. It is quite pos­ sible that this problem will be alleviated by time, but for now. at least, we must pursue another strategy.10 10. Some may think that this is a hasty conclusion. I would direct them to my more informal ( but nonetheless extensive) attempts to engage with and un­ derstand the differences between Harman's and Bryant's variants of 000, in the commentary section of my blog <http://deontol ogistics.wordpress.com>.

The aim of this book is to lay the groundwork for a proper 5 engagement with 000 by focusing on the philosophical systern of its progenitor: Graham Harman's own Object-Oriented Philosophy (OOP). As the oldest and most well-defined vari­ ant of 000, this provides us with the best starting point for any wider engagement with the movement. H owever, to treat OOP with proper respect means to deal with it in its specificity-that is, outside the context of the overarching rhetoric that binds together the different strands of 000. This is particularly important insofar as, while it is sometimes clear what the proponents of 000 think, it is often far less clear why they think it, which only exacerbates the problem of the divergences between them . The first step of my approach (chapter 1) will thus be to present as complete and concise a summary of the 'what' of OOP as I can, breaking down the metaphysical system into three distinct aspects: withdrawal (1.1 ) , the fourfold (1.2 ) , and vicarious causation (1.3) . The second step (chapter 2) will then be to present as charitable an interpretation of the ' why' of OOP as I can , teasing out and reconstructing the possible arguments for each of these three aspects in as much detail as is feasible. before assessing them on their merits. The third step (chapter 3) will be to make a number of overarching criti­ cisms of the project of OOP on the basis of this assessment, pinpointing several key problems that run throughout it. The final step (chapter LJ) will then be to present the hyperbolic projection of OOP initially promised , and to draw some conclu ­ sions about precisely what O O P (and perhaps 000) h a s to offer on these grounds. Like the other variants of so-called ' S pecu lative Real ­ i s m ' ( those o f l a i n H a m i lton G rant, R a y B rassier, and z __, JJ 0 0 c () ::! 0 z

6 Quentin Meil lassou x ) , O O P claims to offer a response to the correlationism that has domi nated p h ilosophy since 15 t; ::> amounts to a radicalisation of a certain kind of correlationism 8 n: (the weak form) . in similar fashion to Meillassoux's philosophy � (in relation to the strong form) , Harman nevertheless presents Kant.11 Althoug h he is willing to admit that his philosophy his work as both a trenchant critique of. and an important step beyond. the menace of correlationism in contemporary philosophy. I do not intend to dispute the idea that there is such a correlationist menace (though I do take it to be more complicated than it is sometimes thought to be) ; but I do take issue with Harman's presentation of his own relationship to it. I n fact. I shall argue that, properly understood , Harman's work should be seen not as a critique of correlationism, but as a consolidation of its central tenets. Harman essentially attempts to overcome the inconsistencies i nherent within correlation­ ism by sacrificing one of its core features-the prohibition on metaphysics-i n order to construct a metaphysical prop whose purpose is nothing less than to bolster the rest of the calamitous edifice. He revives and transforms Kant's noumenal real m in order to preserve the most disastrous prejudices of the correlationist tradition he claims to break with . Far from being a truly 'weird ' realism, OOP is no more than the eccentric uncle of the correlationist family. The metaphysical spoils it claims to have liberated from the Kantian stronghold are so 11. For the canonical text on Speculative Realism see R. Mackay (ed . ) . Col­ lapse vol . 3 ( Falmouth: U rbanomic. 2007); for a definition of Correlationism see Q. Meillassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. tr. R . Brassier ( New York and London: Continuum. 2008); for Harman's discus­ sion of his relationship to correlationism see his Philosophy in the Making; for my own detailed discussion of these see chapter 3.3 subsection IV. chapter 3.4 subsection I. chapter 3.5 subsection I l l . and chapter 4.1.

much ashes and rust. After all is said and done, it returns to us naked . claiming to be wreathed in the finest vestments. The only proper gesture of respect, in such circumstances. is to point out its immodesty.12 z --< Al 0 0 c 0 --< 0 z 12. As this indicates. this book is indeed a polemic of sorts. I will not preempt - this polemic by endeavouring to outline its scope in advance. but I will attempt to preempt the objection that I violate my own principle of respect simply by adopting a polemical tone. Harman's own words on this topic are eminently suited for this purpose: ' Polemical writing in philosophy no longer enjoys its previous level of acceptance, and is now often dismissed as the product of incivility, aggression, even jealousy. Against this attitude. we should appreci­ ate the clarifying tendencies of polemic-always the favoured genre of au­ thors frustrated by the continued clouding of an important decision, whether through fashionable cliche or dubious conceptual maneuvers'. (Guerrilla Meta­ physics [ La Salle, IL: Open Court. 2005]. 1 1 ) .

1 THE LAVA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

Before performing exploratory surgery on the beating heart 11 of OOP. it is first necessary to present the customary compliments regarding the overal l shape and style of its vascular architecture. Whatever else may be said about Harman's presentation of OOP. it is certainly compelling. On the one hand. it attempts to reveal the inherent oddness of the world in which we live. depicting a reality i n which everything is radically individual. cut off from everything else in almost every respect. connected only by fleeting glimmers of phenomenal appearance. On the other. it attempts to humble humanity by seeing humans as just one more disparate association of objects within the universal diaspora , and the intentional terms through which they relate to one another as merely an expres­ sion of a more fundamental sensual connectivity in which everything may partake. Such willing ness to countenance counterintuitive metaphysical conclusions and to embrace ontological humility is to be applauded . M oving on, the central axis around which Harman's meta­ physical system turns is the distinction between the real and the sensual. He is fond of describing this by appealing to a volcanic metaphor: the reality of things consists in their 'molten cores', the liquid specificities of which withdraw behind a 'sensual crust' of visible features. On this view, the substantial magma at the heart of every entity is forever trapped beneath a rocky outer surface whose stil lness is only occasionally i nter­ rupted by the tectonic forces it unleashes. However, these occasional eruptions always catch us u nawares. We never glimpse the molten essence as it leaks through the faultlines in its phenomenal facade, but only catch it as it cools, already crystallising i nto new sensual continents. The lava itself is nowhere to be found . To twist this metaphorical register for the purposes of summary: Harman's is a world of disconnected --f I m r > < > --f I > --f 0 > :u m z 0 --f [fJ '1J m > ;>; � [fJ z > s: m

12 w ::;: <l'. z (/) !:: "' <l'. w 0.. (/) f-0 z w a:: <l'. 0 f-­ <l'. I f-­ <l'. > <l'. __J w I f-- volcanic island nations floating in a cool sensual sea-a world in which you can travel as much as you like, but you ' l l always be a tourist. No matter how hard you try, you ' l l never see the real island. only beaches full of foreign holidaymakers and chintzy gift shops. You might get the occasional taste of it-a whiff of the exotic food the real islanders eat as you pass by, or a stolen glimpse of the real lives of the inhabitants over a whitewashed wall-but that's all you 'll ever get. In order to provide an adequate exposition of Harman's noumenal cosmology, I shall divide my discussion of the split between the real and the sensual into three parts. I will first tackle the relation between the real and the sensual u nder the heading of withdrawa l , which is the most famous aspect of Harman's position. I will then show how this is complicated by the introduction of a second axis-the distinction between objects and qualities-under the heading of the fourfold, which is the name of the structure Harman derives from their intersection. Finally, I will address the most prominent meta­ physical problem that emerges from Harman's system . and his solution to it, which goes by the name of vicarious causation.

1. W I T H D RAWA L It is all too easy to say that Harman's world is divided into two: a celestial plane of intentional facades masking a hellish real m o f machinic forces. an open space o f sensual contact conceal­ ing the endlessly churning reality that makes it possible. The truth is that these two sides of his cosmos are folded into one another at every opportunity: there is no straight line from one sensual point to another that does not pass through a real one. and vice versa . What we have here is a pluriverse of infernal engines that present themselves to one another only so as to hide their internal mach inations. Like the many hells of Buddhist lore. each of these engines is a real m u nto itself, composed of further layers of tortuous machinery; each part of which is available to its fel lows only in outline. containing its own inexplicable depths. concealing further strange and sulphurous landscapes, ever more i ntricate and malicious economies of action yet to be explored. This is the world of real objects. It is a world to which we ourselves belong, along with everything that has any real effect u pon us-or indeed , upon anything at all. This is the site of everything that really happens in the world. It is important to distinguish between two kinds of hap­ pening, though : execution and causation. For Harman. a real object just is its execution. which is to say its being-whatever­ it-is. or rather. doing-whatever-it-does. This is to say that each real object is defined by some inscrutable end for which it is the corresponding act . The relation between every real thing taken as a whole and the parts that compose it is to be understood in terms of fu nctional relations. like the relation between a machi ne and its components. The real object consists in the 13

14 _J <( ;;: <( 0: 0 I f- 3: unitary action of its parts deployed towards the given end : it is its execution insofar as it is a function in action. There is more that could be said about this, but for now it is important to recognise that although this action is certainly a happening of sorts, it is the occurrence of sameness. or simple persistence. The various machinic arrangements of parts and wholes that compose the real are essentially synchronic. For Harman, causation is the occurrence of difference, or change, and it emerges from diachronic relations of interaction between real objects. The paradox with which he closes his first book, Tool-Being,13 is that his characterisation of such objects as persisting unities seems to preclude the possibility that they could effect change in one another-implying an essentially static cosmic order, in opposition to the seeming reality of change that constantly assails our senses. The reason for this is that the reality of persistence qua execution implies that real objects withdraw from one another, u nable to affect one another at a l l . This withdrawal has two facets: the excess of everything over its presentations, and the i ndependence of everything from everything else. Excess fol lows from the i nscrutability of the end governing each object. which occludes the object's internal economy of action (execution) and thereby the external capacities for action (causation) that emerge from it. Execution is a pure act of per­ sistence u nderlying every actual interaction, and a pure actual­ ity underlying every possible interaction. This means that it transcends both interaction and possibility. We can never know the sheer execution of the thing that lies behind every possible encounter. I nsofar as ontological humility demands that we treat the way we grasp the capabilities of objects-through 13. LaSalle. IL: Open Court, 2002, §25-6.

either theoretical or practical engagement with them-as just one more instance of an encounter between any two real objects, we must conclude that our inability to grasp an object's veiled execution through any particular possible inter­ action is a deeper fact about the metaphysics of encounters. This is the fact that the world also contains sensual objects. Our own experience of the world is phenomenologically con­ stituted by i ntentional relations directed at unitary objects, and this implies that objects' experience of one another is metaphysically constituted by something similar. If objects encounter one another as unities, and yet fail to encounter one another directly, then encounters must be mediated by unitary intentional facades or caricatures entirely distinct from the executant realities that project them. I ndependence follows from this, insofar as every real object is protected from every other by an honour guard of distinct sensual objects, forever precluding access to it. at least by default. Finally, it must be emphasised that withdrawal does not merely occur between isolated real objects, like a non-aggres­ sion pact between the many hells; it also occurs within them, in the form of mereological isolation. It is easy to see how this i nvolves the mutual withdrawal of the parts of an object from one another, insofar as they are real objects in their own right; but it also consists in the withdrawal of parts from the wholes they compose, and wholes from the parts they contain. Of course. the whole is dependent u pon its parts, insofar as it cannot subsist without them, but at the same time it is inde­ pendent of them, i n two senses: (a) it is entirely possible for its parts to be replaced without significantly altering its internal economy; and (b) this economy produces capacities which exceed the capacities of the parts taken in isolation. Similarly, although the parts may be reci procally dependent u pon one 15

16 another to some extent ( insofar as they require certai n condi­ tions i n which to function) . they are equally independent of __J <( their context in two senses: (a) it is entirely possible for them <( a:: 0 I f- to be transplanted into a different whole without dissolving 5: 3: their own distinct unity; and ( b) new contexts may reveal hith­ erto unexpressed capacities that were previously suppressed . A real object considered as a whole is a specific arrangement of parts that both transcends and fails to exhaust their specificity. Despite the fact that the real object consists in transcending this excess of specificity, it nevertheless plays an additional role, i nsofar as the whole draws upon it i n generating the sensual objects it hides behind. The various inessential features of a real object's parts become resources for producing the phenomenal accidents that cloak its executant reality.

2. T H E FOU RFOLD Once we begin to talk about the features and capacities of objects as distinct from the objects themselves, we stumble upon the second fundamental axis around which Harman's system tu rns: the disti nction between objects and their qualities. Things are not just torn between their su bterra­ nean execution and its phenomenal effects. but also between their persistent u nity and its constituent plurality. This does not concern how a singular whole is composed of multiple parts (e.g .. the composition of an ice cube out of molecules) , although this is a related issue, but how a single entity is determined in various ways (e. g . , the coldness, hardness, or translucency of the ice cube) . The mutual withdrawal between parts and whole noted above consists in wholes having quali­ ties their parts lack (e.g . , the molecules are neither translucent nor hard ) , and parts having qualities their wholes ignore (e.g . , the unique chemical properties of the trace amount of miner als in the water is usually entirely irrelevant to the ice cube) . Qualities are not objects. even if the qualities a thing pos­ sesses somehow bubble up from the objects that compose it.14 These two distinctions-real/sensual and object/qual­ ity-are not merely parallel, but cut across one another. This produces a fourfold of terms: in addition to the distinction between sensual objects (SO) and real objects ( RO) . there is a d istinction between sensual qual ities ( SQ) and rea l qualities ( RQ). The objects that appear in our phenomenal experience are 'encrusted ' with sensible features that may vary 14. We will complicate this claim to some extent in chapter 2.1 . subsection I l l a n d chapter 2.2. subsection I . 17 _, I m .,, 0 c ;;o .,, 0 r 0

18 from moment to moment, but the latter are entirely distinct from the real features 'submerged· in the silent execution they 0 _J 0 u.. 0: ::J 0 u.. U.J I f- conceal . Here we begin to see how the four poles interact with one another to form Harman's ten categories. The relation between a sensual object and its sensual qualities (SO-SQ) is the condition of the variation of its encrusted accidents, or time itself. whereas the relation between a sensual object and its real qualities (SO-RQ) is the submerged anchor around which this variation is fixed , or what Edmund H usserl calls eidos. These two categories are the first of what Harman calls the 'tensions' between object and quality. The emergence of sensual objects in our experience is dependent u pon the sensible features the corresponding real objects allow them to present from perspective to perspective; and the distinctness of these underlying real objects is in turn dependent u pon dif­ ferences between the features they can never present. This gives us the remaining two tensions. The relation between a real object and its sensual qualities ( RO-SQ) is the condition under which it can relate to another object through a sensuous facade, or space, whereas the relation between a real object and its real qualities ( RO-RQ) is its principle of uniqueness, or what Xavier Zubiri calls essence. Taken together, these four tensions provide the schema of sameness and difference between objects, both real and apparent , along with their constancy and variation. Harman calls the changes that emerge within this schema 'fissions' and 'fusions'. This is because two of the tensions (time and eidos) involve a persistent state of connection between object and quality-so that any change would entail fission of this connection-and the other two (space and essence) involve a persistent state of separation-so that any change would entail fusion of that which is separated .

19 -i I m ,, 0 c ::a ,, 0 r 0 Contiguity Emanation

20 Fissions. It is important to recognise that the fissions take place within the sensual realm, insofar as they involve breaks in the 0 _J 0 LL "' :::0 0 LL w I f- connections between the sensual objects we experience and their qualities. I n confrontation, a sensual object is split from its sensual qualities (time) , so that its accidental features are somehow revealed os accidental . This occurs when we recog­ nise something os something (e.g . , a tree os a gallows) , thereby separating those qualities that are relevant to this characterisa­ tion (e.g . , height, branch structure, etc.) from those that are not (e.g . , colour, foliage, etc . ) . I n theory, the sensual object is split from its real qualities (eidos) , so that its eidetic features are somehow contrasted with its accidental ones. This occurs when we strive to grasp the constants that underlie the shifting surface variations to which all things are subject (e.g . , when we analyse the tree's morphology, or its genetic structure) . Fusions. By contrast, only one of the fusions marks the emergence of real objects within the phenomenal sphere, so as to redraw its boundaries from within; whereas the other fusion is entirely withdrawn , and therefore is only apparent in the ways it redraws these boundaries from without. The first fusion is allure, where a real object i nteracts with the features of the sensible facades it projects (space) , such that there is an apparent juxtaposition between its accidental elements and its eidetic core. This occurs in various aesthetically significant experiences (e.g . , cuteness, beauty, humour, embarrassment, humility, disappointment, loyalty) ,15 but is most prominently manifest in the use of metaphor (e.g . , when we frame our experience of the tree by describing it as 'a flame' ) . The second fusion is causation, where the real object interacts with its own real features (essence) so as to u nlock its capacities to affect 15. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 212-13.

the withdrawn core of other things. As already indicated , the 21 possibility of causation is called into question by withdrawal. and this in turn necessitates the theory of vicarious causation, which will turn u pon the real object's relation with allure. Before getting i nto this thoug h , we must examine the remaining six categories, which are divided i nto ' radiations' between qualities and qualities. and 'junctions' between objects and objects. M uch as there was a rift between one of the ten­ sions and the other three with regard to their role in experience, there is a crucial difference between the roles that radiations and junctions play therein. On the one hand, the radiations cover the way that qualities are related within experience by the sen­ sual objects that populate it: the relation between two sensual qualities (SQ-SQ) is their emanation through the same object of experience, the relation between two real qualities ( RQ- RQ) is their contraction behind this same object. and the relation between the sensual qualities and the real qualities (SQ- RQ) is their duplicity in the way they differ from one another. On the other hand , the junctions cover the way that relations between objects constitute experience in relation to ourselves qua real objects: the relation between two sensual objects (SO-SO) can only take place as contiguity within our experience, the relation between two real objects ( RO-RO) is the withdrawal of the corresponding real objects behind our experience, and the relation between a real object and a sensual object ( RO­ SO) is the sincerity that constitutes this experience itself. Together, the three radiations and three conjunctions provide the framework i n which the three experiential tensions can unfold. They give us an abstract map of the phenomenal realms that lie between infernal kingdoms of execution-the border­ lands through which they smuggle causal contraband, or the embassies through which they communicate. -; I m "11 0 c :0 "11 0 r 0

3. VI CA R I OUS CAUSAT I O N 23 < 0 We can now turn to the problem of how this communication occurs. The independence of real objects from one another demands such an explanation: How can mutually withdrawn objects possibly interact, so as to produce real changes in one a nother? The latter are qu ite distinct from the mere phenomenal variations that sensual objects undergo in expe­ rience, because they can reconfigure the very i ntentional space within which experience occurs. Yet it is only within these i ntentional spaces that a real object can encounter the variable facades projected by other real objects, and only through these sensual vicars that any sort of contact can be established between them. The fact that all causal contact arises out of an intentional relation between an experiencing real object and an experienced sensual object that mediates between it and its real counterpart implies that the causal rela­ tion is not just vicarious, but also asymmetrical and buffered. It is asymmetrical because the relation has direction, proceed­ ing from the object the vicar conceals to the object the vicar appears to. This means that causation can occur one-way between real objects, without reciprocation (e. g . , when a bee is hit by an oncoming car, the bee may be destroyed while the car is entirely unscathed ) . And it is buffered because there are many contiguous sensual objects present in the same experi­ ence, and this does not result in interactions between the real objects they hide (e.g . , the bee may be drawn into the path of the truck by an enticing flower, but the truck and the flower may be entirely unrelated ) . This means that a real object's sincerity in encountering a sensual object is the condition of that object's receptivity. )> ;;o 6 c en 0 )> c en � 6 z

2� However, we are not causally affected by every object we experience. The phenomenal realms that real objects find z 0 f­ <( rn ::> <( (.) rn ::> 0 a:: <( (.) > themselves immersed in are fi l led to the brim with myriad sensual u nities, many of which have no impact u pon them at all. This means that i ntentional relations are not necessarily causal relations. So what more is there to causal contact than mere sincerity? Harman responds by invoking the link between causation and allure mentioned above. Genuine change is internal to a real object. insofar as it only occurs when a real object becomes connected to its qualities in regenerati ng its essence; but this nevertheless requires an external trigger, which can only take the form of some variation within the intentional space in which it is immersed . Harman proposes that the confrontations usually precipitated by such variation are i nsufficient to trigger causal contact. because the qualities encountered therein are still tied to the facade that h ides the triggering object from the triggered object . It is only i n allusion that these ties are broken, and the qualities allowed to orbit the real object underlying them (e.g., when the metaphorical comparison of the tree with a flame highlights the relevant qualities in a way that makes them alien to the tree with which we are familiar) . Allure lets reality obliquely slide into appearance, striking the object that experiences it in a way that surpasses the sensual flux it is accustomed to, so that the accidental features of the affecting object catalyse the reshuffli ng of essential features within the affected object. Nevertheless, the affected object does not strictly see the affecting object. even if it feels it in some specific aesthetic mode (e.g .. as humorous) and to some specific degree of aes­ thetic intensity (e.g .. as only mildly humorous) . The brief suspen­ sion of causal i ndependence that occurs in causal connection never really overcomes the corresponding epistemic excess.

Allure may play an important role in enabling us to reconfigure 25 the ways we think about entities, but it never amounts to knowledge of them . This is why Harman grants aesthetics a special philosophical privilege. According to him. examining the varieties of allure and their relationships gives us an i nsight into the metaphysical structure of reality, an insight that forever escapes the stale practice of epistemology. With the tenfold categorical schema derived from the fourfold, Harman has provided a general theory of objects-which he calls ontog­ raphy-capable of application to the various specific domains of objects that compose the cosmos. Yet it is only through an extending of the sorts of aesthetic analysis i ndicated by his theory of allure that these domains can be fleshed out. U lti mately, Harman proposes an alliance of aesthetics and metaphysics that promises to lay bare the various regions of the cosmos to renewed philosophical inquiry. It now falls to us to assess this proposal . and its worth. :s 0 l> Al 6 c (fJ 0 l> c (fJ l> __, 6 z

2 THE WITHDRAWAL OF ARGUMENTS

Having looked i nto the ' what' of OOP, it is time to concern 29 ourselves with the 'why'. This means locating the various arguments that Harman presents for each of the different -i I m aspects of his metaphysical system distinguished above. As :::;: =i I 0 ;o l> :::;: l> r 0 .,, l> ;o Ci) c ;:: m z -i en I hinted in the i ntroduction, this is by no means an easy task. Although Harman's work is peppered with phrases such as ' I will show.. .', ' I have already argued . ..', o r 'As argued repeatedly. . .', these often do not refer to specific arguments so much as to the overarching dramatisation of a given idea that takes place throughout the work.16 There are a few notable exceptions to this, as we shall see, but what arguments there are in Har­ man's work tend to be blended together i n ways that make them hard to tease apart-a task which is vital if they are to be properly assessed. To draw on Harman's own preferred metaphors once more, the arguments often seem to withdraw i nto themselves, leaving textual vicars that tantalise one's cognitive faculties by alluding to their real logical depths. Our current task is thus to draw them out of hiding and expose them to the light of reason.17 16. These examples are all taken from Tool-Being (19, 61, and 70), but one can find many similar phrases in all his works. It is very rare to find such a phrase that is tied in any way to a specific chain of inferences (for instance by referencing the pages upon which the supposed argument takes place) . 17. Harman himself looks down on this sort of critical engagement with the arguments underlying a philosophical position for various reasons (cf. Guerrillo Metaphysics. §12A) . some of which are curiously intertwined with elements of his own position. Instead of systematically critiquing a position on the basis of flaws in its argumentation, he would rather that we strove to present coun­ ternarratives that construct suggestive alternatives to it. Even while Harman admits that 'such debunking may be necessary work at times', he nevertheless maintains that 'we should not forget that it is mainly the work of dogs (cynics, to say it in Greek) ' (ibid . ) . Even if we grant this, it cannot get in the way of the work that respect demands. Mere preference cannot dictate when the dogs should be released. Woof.

30 Of course, Harman also has his own (fairly derogatory) opin­ ions about the role of reason and argument within philosophy, (/) r­ z UJ ::;; ::> (.'J "' <( LL 0 _J <( :;:: <( "' 0 I r- 3: UJ I r- as a part of his wider concern with the importance of philo­ sophical 'style', a concern that must be taken into account.18 We shall address these later on (chapter LJ.2) . For now, our aim is to delineate and perhaps even repair as much as is feasible of the justificatory tissue holding together the skeletal structure of Harman's corpus that was revealed in chapter 1 . This i s a delicate operation that requires exegetical care, logical skill, and no small amount of discursive charity. We are about to move from exploratory to reconstructive surgery. In order to facilitate this, I shall highlight three different ways in which Harman frames his ideas with an eye to their justification: h istorical narrat ive, phenomenological description, and metaphysical argu ment. Historical narratives introduce an idea by reconstruct­ ing its genesis within a particular historical dialectic, usually constituted by a series of different thinkers each of whom makes some important contribution to the problematic in which the idea gestates. only to emerge fully formed in Harman's own work. These rational reconstructions are an important philosophical tool deployed by many of the great figures in the history of philosophy.19 The philosophies of Hegel, Heidegger, and Deleuze would not be as compelling or even as acces­ sible without the thematic vectors they trace through their forebears in the direction of their own work. Harman is thus 18. Cf. Prince of Networks. 169-75. 19. For an account of the logic of this process of reconstruction. see Robert Brandom's work on the historical dimension of rationality in the introduction to Tales of the Mighty Dead (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. 2002) and his own reconstruction of Hegel in Reason in Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2009). chapter 3.

to be commended for wielding this method of exposition with 31 some skill. However, the danger associated with this method is that it can easily slip from licit exposition to illicit justification _, I m in the form of arguments from authority. Such arguments :;;: =< can be useful as shorthand forms of justification (equ ivalent to saying 'you need to go read Aristotle/Hegel/Heidegger/ etc. before we can talk seriously about this' ) ; but they wither under more sustained forms of philosophical scrutiny. The issue is exacerbated where the readings of the figures in question are particularly controversial. as is Harman's reading of Heidegger, which forms a crucial part of his own object­ oriented history.20 As such , in separating out these narratives from the other forms of exposition and argument in Harman's work, my primary goal will be to ensure that they play no such illicit justificatory role. Phenomenological descriptions play an important part in Harman's work, insofar as his metaphysics is thoroughly influ­ enced by an appropriation of the ideas of Husserl and Heidegger. His is a metaphysics of intentional relation, and his account of i ntentionality is fundamentally culled from the phenomeno­ logical tradition and its methodology of immanent description. However, the methodological questions regarding the nature and status of phenomenological description that were of such concern to H usserl and Heidegger receive little attention in Harman's work. He is often all too eager to delve directly into 20. This is an area. in which I can speak with at least enough authority to be taken seriously, given the fact that my PhD thesis ( The Question of Being: Heidegger and Beyond, Warwick U niversity 2012. <http://deontologistics. wordpress.com/thesisl > ) presents a synoptic reading of Heidegger's work which, while diverging from both the standard analytic and Continental read­ ings, much as Harman's does. comes to conclusions radically different (and, I would argue. far more nuanced) than Harman's. I 0 ;u )> :;;: )> r 0 .,, )> ;u Gl c ;;:: m z _, (fJ

32 rJ) f­ z w :::;: :::J CJ a:: <( phenomenological analysis without clarifying precisely what it means to do so. Whereas Husserl devotes a enormous amount of time and effort to elaborating the various aspects of the phenomenological reduction, and Heidegger devotes a serious ( if not necessarily comparable) effort to modifying this within u.. his own existential-hermeneutic framework, Harman gives us __, little in the way of phenomenological methodology. This not only 0 <( :;: <( a:: 0 I >-- :;: w I >-- makes the precise content of many of his phenomenological claims unclear, but more worryingly brings into question the metaphysical conclusions that are leveraged on the basis of these claims. It is thus of the utmost importance to identify precisely which of Harman's claims are motivated by phenom­ enological analysis, and how they are deployed in the attempt to justify his more contentious metaphysical claims. This brings us to the third form of exposition: metaphysical argument itself. Specifically, it raises the question of what quali­ fies either a philosophical claim or its justification as 'metaphysi­ cal '. I n other words: Just what is metaphysics anyway? (chapter 3. 5 will address this explicitly.) This question should weigh heav­ ily on the shoulders of anyone intending to engage in renewed metaphysical speculation regardless of their preferred method, but this weight becomes particularly acute when one intends to derive metaphysical conclusions from phenomenological prem­ ises. Although it is possible to find his account wanting, it could hardly be said that Heidegger merely identifies phenomenology and ontology without addressi ng and attempting to justify this quite radical divergence from the metaphysical tradition.21 Heidegger's detailed historical and methodological work on the problem of metaphysics and the question of Being garners almost no attention in Harman's work, nor is it supplemented 21. For details. consult my The Question of Being.

by any detailed alternative schema. I ndeed , the most sustained 33 engagement with the question I have been able to locate dis­ misses the possibility of even addressing the methodological -; I m task of clarifying the question of Being prior to answering it: 'the :;;: =< question of [ B]eing cannot be elucidated until the meaning of [ B]eing itself has already somehow been clarified , prior to any special description of Dasein .'22 This sidelining of methodologi­ cal issues is rather worrying given Harman's unapologetic calls to return to the problems of precritical metaphysics.23 All of this indicates just how important it is to separate out the roles these different forms of exposition play in the more or less explicit arguments within Harman's work, and the way overlaps between them further complicate many of the implicit assumptions u ndergirding the latter. H owever. the critical purchase u pon Harman's work this would provide requires an exhaustive approach that presents its own particular problems. Firstly, the ideal of exhaustiveness places exegetical demands u pon a commentator (and critic) that are often unrealistic, and this can easily lead to accusations of impropriety. I have gone 22. Tool-Being. "10. 23. It is also helpful to note that despite using the term ' being' quite exten­ sively throughout Tool-Being. Harman neve r provides any generic definition or analysis of the term that goes beyond his own metaphysical account of it. If pushed to provide a quick analysis of his usage of the term. I would say that he uses it in one of two senses: (a) in the particular sense to refer to the being of a given object (cf. Tool-Being 85). or (b) in the singular sense to refer to the totality of objects (cf. Ibid .. 29"1 ) . This almost entirely elides the general sense referring to the Being of objects as such with which Heidegger himself is prin­ cipally concerned (as the subject of the question of Being). In addition, in ac­ cordance with his own metaphysical proclivities. the senses in which Harman does use the term are almost universally deployed in opposition to seeming (cf. 26). which is only one of the major oppositions that Heidegger outlines (and indeed, questions) in the course of his career (cf. Introduction to Metaphysics. tr. G. Fried and R. Polt [ New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000], 103-22) . I 0 Al l> :;;: l> r 0 .,, l> Al Gl c ;;: m z -; (/)

out of my way to read as much of Harman's extant work as I UJ f­ z w :::; ::i (!) 0:: <( lL 0 _J <( ;;;: <( 0:: 0 I f- 'i: w I f- can. in order to forestall such accusations, but I expect them nonetheless.24 Secondly, it places hermeneutic demands on those who would read (and perhaps respond to) the com­ mentary-demands that are substantial if not unreasonable. Not only must readers be willing to cover the same exegetical ground as the commentator; they must also keep track of multiple different arguments and their intersections. I have endeavoured to organise this book in as accessible a manner as possible, but this can only ameliorate these problems rather than obviate them entirely. Thirdly, the exhaustive approach often has profoundly counterproductive psychological effects. It is an unfortu nate fact that it is often easier to convince someone of the falsity of a theory or the wrongness of a policy by focusing u pon a single objection to it, rather than aiming to present several, equally serious objections. We all have a finite amount of attention , and thus a limited ability to cope with barrages of arguments; and these unavoidable limitations can often lead to our dismissing arguments that overload our attentional capacities. This phenomenon is a serious problem in many mainstream political debates, where certain multifariously flawed ideas often survive precisely because no unitary line of attack u pon them is obvious. I enjoin the reader to recognise this phenomenon , and not to take the lack of a singular knock­ down criticism as a point in favour of the position criticised . 24 . The footnotes throughout this book will reveal the full extent of this reading. I have consulted all published books and essay collections, but I have not read all of Harman's published papers, nor any unpublished material that may be circulating. I have also followed the writings on his blog ( <http://doc­ torzamalek2.wordpress.com> ) rather extensively, though I have refrained from referencing them in justifying any of the substantial points in this paper, for obvious reasons. I consider this to be an eminently reasonable level of work to justify the present book, even if I cannot completely rule out the possibility that . I have missed something crucial in the writings I have not read.

This brings me to the last substantive point in this prolegom- 35 ena, which regards the nature of philosophical disagreement and its presentation. In previous, more informal debates, Har­ man has complained that I fail to follow the proper proce­ dure for engaging with a discursive opponent: firstly outlining the areas in which one agrees with one's i nterlocutor, and then proceeding to outline the relevant disagreements.25 My response is that, sometimes, there simply are not enough points of agreement to make this anything more than an empty gesture. My own commitments, which I have endeav­ oured to keep out of this book wherever possible,26 are quite radically different from Harman's, and this leaves little ground for praise on my part . Nevertheless, I will mention six areas in which there is something resembling agreement between us: (i) we both think that correlationism is problematic; (ii) we both hold that individuality is an important metaphysical topic; (iii) we agree that there is more to panpsychism than is often thought; ( iv) we each take it that aesthetics is an important philosophical field with wider ramifications than commonly accepted ; (v) we are jointly committed to both the possibil­ ity and necessity of metaphysics in some form; and (vi ) we strongly agree that realism is essential if this metaphysics is to be pursued properly. The problem is that, once we begin to define what is meant by the core terms in each case (correlationism, individual­ ity, panpsychism, aesthetics, metaphysics, and realism ) , the 25. Private correspondence. 26. For an unpolished overview of my own position, I recommend reading the available draft of my Essay on Transcendental Realism ( <http://deontologis­ tics.wordpress.com/2010/05/essay-on-transcendental-realism.pdf> ). This is a rough draft that has yet to be revised and expanded for publication, but it does a reasonable job of outlining the central themes of my work. � I m � � I 0 ;u )> � )> r 0 'Tl )> ;u Gl c <:: m z _, (/)

36 Cf) f-­ z U.J ::;;; ::::J <!l "' <( u. 0 __J <( :s: <( "' 0 I f-- 3: U.J I f-- agreements turn out to have been fairly superficial: ( i ) I agree with Quentin Meillassoux27 that the essence of correlation­ ism is epistemological rather than metaphysica l , and that it must be challenged on this terrain rather than dismissed as ontologically arrogant; ( i i ) I think that there can be no study of the metaphysics of individuality that does not begin with its logic (e.g . . identification, quantification, existential commitment. etc.) rather than leaping headlong into intui­ tive speculation ; ( i i i ) the history of panpsychism I am con­ cerned with (e.g . , Spinoza, Leibniz. N ietzsche. Whitehead , and Deleuze) is characterised by its generalisation of non­ intentional features of thought (i.e., conation and sensation ) ; ( iv) I am convinced that aesthetics, a s t h e study o f a certain kind of value, has less to do with the sensations and feelings that signal its presence than with the actions this demands of us; (v) I predict that a return to metaphysical speculation without the methodological awareness accompanying an answer to the question ' What is metaphysics? ' is doomed to failure; and (vi ) I think that there can be no viable 'realism' without a definition of ' rea l ' more subtle than 'that which is always other than our knowledge of it'. This is all I shall say about these disagreements for now. The criticisms upon which they turn will be revealed as we look at Harman's arguments themselves. I shall group these arguments on the basis of the aspect of his system that they underpin (withdrawal, the fourfold, and vicarious causation, respectively) , so that the order of the following subsections corresponds directly to the order of those i n the previous section. Each section will deal with a number of different 27. 'Speculative Realism', in Collapse vol. 3, 445-6, in conversation with Peter Hallward.

arguments of varying strength and complexity, with varying 37 degrees of reconstruction on my part. Each is shorter than the last, as the relevant arguments build u pon one another. --< I m I will do my best to indicate exegetical concerns surrounding my :;;: =< reconstructions, but my aim is to present the strongest possible forms of each argument, so as to make the corresponding criticisms as strong as possible. I 0 ::0 )> :;;: )> r 0 ,, )> ::0 Gl c ;;:: m z --< en

1. TO O LS , K N OW L E D G E , A N D D I ST I N CT N ESS Harman h a s several arguments for his account o f withdrawal. By far the most famous is the reading of Heidegger's tool­ analysis presented i n his first book, Tool-Being. H owever. despite the fact that the tool-analysis is referred to and sum­ marised to different degrees throughout Harman's work, it remains fairly opaque in its logical structure.28 This is principally because, although it is referred to as if it were a single argu­ ment . Harman's version is really a blend of a number of distinct arguments, mixing all three forms of exposition discussed above: historical, phenomenological , and metaphysical . Disen­ tangling these expository and justificatory strands is difficult enough when focusing on one text. but its manifold presenta­ tion confronts us with some serious choices about how to proceed . I have decided to focus upon two presentations of the analysis: the original and most detailed presentation of it in Tool-Being, and a more recent and concise presentation of it in Harman's book on Meillassoux , Philosophy in the Making.29 I highly recommend reading the relevant sections of these texts alongside my reconstruction of the tool-analysis, so as to confirm the fidelity of my reconstruction. These preliminaries aside, I shall break down the tool-analysis into two separate parts. I call these the argument from execution and the argu­ ment from excess. This will be fol lowed by an examination of 28. To give a representative example, in the collection Towards Speculative Realism (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010), 8 out of 11 essays contain truncated summaries of the tool-analysis. 29. Philosophy in the Making, 135-6. 39 _, 0 0 r "' "" z 0 ::;: r m 0 G) m l> z 0 '2 en :::! z 0 _, z m en en

40 Cl'. w CD CD w 0 w I (fJ z "' � Cl'. "' I an additional argument that often accompanies them, and which I call the argument from identity. I . HARMAN'S H E I DEGG ER Before delving into the details of the tool-analysis, we must address the exegetical elephant in the room. I have already announced my disagreement with Harman's reading of Hei­ degger. H a rman is very clear that his version of the tool­ analysis is not one that Heidegger would himself endorse, and that as such it must be assessed on its own merits. This is precisely what I intend to do. H owever, in line with my earlier remarks about the role of historical narrative, it will be helpful to present the crucial errors of Harman's reading of Heidegger as I see them. On the one hand, this inoculates against any illicit slip from exposition to justification, and, on the other, it helps to situate within their correct historical context many of the issues Harman is dealing with . There are five principal aspects of Harman's reading with which I disagree: (i) he reads Heidegger's critique of presence as championing a complementary notion of execution; ( i i ) he takes the distinction between the ontological and the antic to be equivalent to the distinction between the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand; (iii) he claims that the ' world ' should not be u nderstood as a phenomenological horizon; ( iv) he holds that Dasein is not central to Heidegger's ontology; and (v) he identifies the encounter with the broken tool with the as-structure. I shall tackle these disagreements by addressing several characteristic criticisms that Harman deploys liberally against other interpreters of Heidegger. (If understanding these exegetical points is of little i nterest to you . you may wish to skip the rest of this subsection. though I do not recommend it.)

To beg i n with , Harman repeatedly criticises other interpret­ �1 ers for mistaking the significance of the distinction between readi ness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit) and presence-at-hand ( Vorhandenheit) for a distinction between types of entity. He zealously reminds his readers that ready-to-hand entities are not those specific things that happen to be used as tools by humans, but rather that any extant entity may be taken as ready-to-hand or present-at-hand .30 This point is certainly misunderstood by a number of interpreters. However, even combined with his reading of Heidegger's use of the word ' mere' (B/of3) to denigrate the status of presence (Anweisenheit) ,31 this does not show that Heidegger is championing a complementary notion of execution ( Vollzug) as the real meaning of ' Being ' that the metaphysical tradition overlooked . On the contrary, it is possible to view this as a distinction between different modes of Being (Seinsarten/Seinsweisen) without reducing it to a distinction between mutually exclusive types of beings. This is precisely how Heidegger describes the distinction .32 Moreover, the fact that Harman will develop this notion of execution into a new conception of substance ( ousia) , bemoaning the inability of Heidegger commentators to see the connection between Zuhandenheit and ousia, 33 indicates that he has diverged from Heidegger somewhere upstream of this point.34 30. Cf. Tool-Being, 38. 31 . Ibid .. 48-9. 32. Cf. Basic Problems of Phenomenology, tr. A Hofstadter (Bloomington, I N : Indiana U niversity Press, 1988) , 305; Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, tr. M. Heim ( Bloomington, I N : Indiana U niversity Press, 1984 ) , 1 51-2. 33. Tool-Being, 270. 34 . Heidegger's criticism of presence is inexorably tied up with his critique of substance, at least in his most systematic presentations of it (cf. Introduction to Metaphysics) . I )> ;o ;;: )> z (fJ I m 0 m Gl Gl m ;o

42 Q'. w t'J t'J w 0 w I (/) z <( ::;;; Q'. <( I Secondly, Harman claims that Heidegger's i nsights cannot be truly ontological ones if they are understood in terms of the intelligibility of entities to Dasein. The argument for this essentially boils down to the idea that intelligibility to Dasein is seeming for Dasein, and Harman defines ' Being' in opposition to seeming .35 For Harman, ontology is the study of beings as they are in themselves, as disti nct from their appearances. This is almost the opposite move made by most orthodox Heidegger scholars, who define ' Being' as the intelligibility of beings as distinct from any 'metaphysical ' conception of the underlying grounds of this i ntelligibility. For them, ontology is the study of appearances freed from the mistaken metaphysical search for the substantial basis of these appearances. In fact. both of these readings are seriously misguided , since Heidegger does not define ' Being' in either of these ways. However, each has an element of truth to it. In line with the orthodox interpretation, Heidegger does indeed try to argue, against the metaphysical tradition, that Being is to be understood in terms of intelligibil­ ity ( unconcealing ) . And i n line with Harman's i nterpretation. he also thinks that something must be said about that which resists or escapes i ntelligibility (concealing ) . His later work in particular attempts to show that the revelation of each entity to our understanding is tempered by its being situated within a broader field of meaning (world) which is always in tension with reality in itself (earth). Every entity thus appears as a local modification of this global struggle (strife/truth). Thirdly, this brings us to Harman's criticism that, in interpret­ ing Heidegger's use of 'world ' as a phenomenological horizon within which entities appear to each given Dasein, Heidegger scholars have stumbled i nto a disastrous regress towards ever deeper unitary grounds (e.g . , Zeitlichkeit, Temporalitdt, 35. See p. 33 n. 23 above.

Ereignis. etc.) .36 Again, as much as this is a legitimate lampoon- �3 ing of the stylistic and exegetical excesses of much Heidegger scholarship, it does not amount to a proof that there is no well-defined regress of u nitary grounds in Heidegger. Even if there is a certain overworn argumentative trope in Heidegger, this does not excuse us from examining the specificities of its i nstances. It is thus entirely possible (and desirable) to determine that there are only a specific number of steps in Heidegger's analyses, and that they actually have an end point i n some more or less well-delimited u nitary structure (e.g . , Temporolitdt i n the early work, o r Ereignis in the later work) . Harman's alternative is to read 'world' as a complete totality of entities rather than a phenomenological horizon within which entities appear. This is a disastrous misreading. one that is explicitly counselled against by Heidegger.37 Fourthly, this sets the stage for Harman's attack on anthro­ pocentric readings of Heidegger. Although Harman recognises that Heidegger himself grants Dasein ontological privilege, he takes this to be entirely unnecessary, insofar as every entity can be i nterpreted as a for-the-sake-of-which engaging with other things in terms of projective understanding.38 Harman explicitly claims that although Heidegger uses the term ' understanding ' ( Verstand) here, this can be interpreted non-anthropocentri­ cally as covering all interactions between things. This is indica­ tive of a really pernicious misu nderstanding of Heidegger's project that underlies the other points addressed so far. Let us briefly summarise Heidegger's account of u nder­ standing: he t h i n ks that Oasein relates to the t h i ngs it 36. He even parodies this regress by way of a children's sleepover game ( Tool-Being, 27) . 37. Cf. Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, §67. 38. Tool-Being, 41-2. I > "' ;:: > z en I m 0 m G) G) m "'

encounters in terms of the possibilities for action that they provide it, and that what characterises Dasein qua Dasein n:: w (') (') w 0 w I (!) z "" :::; Cl'. "" I (Existenz) is that set of conditions (Existentiale) without which Dasein could not count as freely choosing, and thus acting in any real sense. Harman is fond of ridiculing Heidegger's analysis of the mode of Being of animality as distinct from Oasein's mode of existence, precisely because he fails to see that Heidegger is describing entities which have similar behavioural capacities to Oasein (drives) but which nevertheless lack the specific conditions of organisation that enable choice (as opposed to mere disinhibition).39 This brings us back to our preceding point: Harman cannot see what it would be to be world-poor precisely insofar as he does not see what it means for something to have a 'world' in Heidegger's sense: an internally articulated space of possible action (i.e., the projection of what is possible) , involving a grasp of both generality and particularity (e. g . , the possibilities of pens as such vs. the possibilities of this particular pen ) , in isola­ tion and situation (e.g .. the possibilities of this pen in relation to paper as such vs. the possibilities of this pen in relation to that piece of paper) , organised in terms of a hierarchy of ends (e. g . , the end of writing a letter, itself a means to maintaining a friendship, itself a means to ... etc. ) u nited by the fundamental goal of becoming oneself (i.e., Oasein as its own for-the-sake­ of-which) . Entities appear in the world for Heidegger insofar as they modify this space of possibility: their actuality consists in the way they open u p certain specific possibilities for action while closing down others. This explains an even earlier criti­ cism: Harman cannot see that differences in modes of Being (e.g . , Zuhandenheit, Vorhandenheit, Existenz. etc.) are not 39. Cf. Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, part 2, chapters 3-6.

simple differences between types of beings, because he does 45 not see the different ways they are supposed to be individuated as actualities within the world qua space of possibility. So, it is true that all spatio-temporally located particulars are both ready-to-hand and present-at-hand in some sense (even if the space and time in question are not straightforwardly identica l ) ; but t h i s is a matter o f t h e difference between o u r grasp of possibilities as tied to the everyday forms of activity we inherit from the culture we are thrown into (e.g . , pens qua writing implements) , and our grasp of possibilities as abstracted from these activities (e. g . , pens qua ink-fil led molded plastic) . Finally, this brings us to Harman's persistent criticisms of pragmatist readings of Heidegger i n general, and of the tool-analysis more specifically. These are i nextricably bound up with the other criticisms already presented, but there is an important additional dimension here: Harman's claim that Heidegger's concern with the use of equipment has nothing to do with use as we normally understand it. but should be understood as a matter of reliance upon equipment.40 It is the fact that reliance is an essentially causal notion that u nderpins Harman's claim that all interactions between entities can be described as entities ' understanding' one another 'as' some­ thing, and the development of this i nto the further claim that all such interactions are analogous to the encounter with the broken tool. We shall return to the independent methodological problems with this claim, but for now it suffices to point out the sheer extent to which it misunderstands Heidegger's account of the as-structure and its relation to the broken tool encounter. The crucial point is that Heidegger distinguishes between the hermeneutic 'as' and the apophantic 'as', and associates these '10. Tool-Being, 18-21 . I )> :1J ;;;: )> z (/) I m 0 m G'l G'l m :1J

46 a:: w (') (') w 0 w I (/) z <( ::; a:: <( I with the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand, respectively. The relationship between the former circumscribes the relationship between the latter: this is essentially a matter of the relation between the implicit and the explicit. It is important to u nderstand that the 'as' is indicative of generality. We grasp something 'as' something insofar as we grasp a particular as an i nstance of a general type. The idea behind the split in the as-structure is that our understanding of this generality can be articulated in two distinct ways, even if these forms of articulation are fundamentally inseparable and always combined to different degrees. We grasp the entities around us principally through the hermeneutic 'as' insofar as the specific possibilities we are immediately presented with by them (e.g . , writing a letter) are articulated by an implicit grasp of the general types of equipment they instantiate (e.g . , pens and paper qua equipment for writing ) . This implicit grasp is the condition of interpretatio_n, which is the process through which we reconsider these immediate possibilities, taking them apart and bringing forth the generalities that articulate them. However, this process of interpretation is not yet linguistic: it is the move to making assertions about entities that trans­ forms the hermeneutic 'as' into the apophantic 'as'. The latter involves the use of special linguistic equipment to isolate and then rearticulate the general possibilities that constitute these types, thus enabling a process of progressive abstraction which extricates the causal capacities of entities from the norma­ tive functions through which our everyday u nderstanding g rasps them. The present-at- hand is nothing but the cor­ relate of the limit-case of this process of abstraction. It is not constituted by pure presence, or actuality devoid of possibility, but rather by pure capacity, or possibility devoid of function.

The exemplars of the present-at-hand are those entities pas- �1 ited by science independently of any role they could have in everyday practices (e.g . , electrons, black holes, mitochondria, etc.). Science is thus hardly the domain of pure presence in this vacuous sense, but rather the forefront of our attempt to work out what is really possible, over and above the expectations implicit in our parochial forms of life. The encounter with the broken tool must be understood in terms of this complex i nterplay between causal capacity and normative function . The important thing to realise is that the tool cannot break u nless it behaves i n a way it is not sup­ posed to: there is no malfunction without proper function. It is the fact that we grasp equipment (e.g. , pen and paper) in terms of a set of normatively articulated everyday activities (e.g . , letter writing, drawing, doodling, etc.) that enables it to surprise us by failing to behave as it should in the context of those activities (e. g . , the pen leaking ink all over the paper) . This means that we must already encounter the equipment as equipment: without a prior hermeneutic 'as', nothing can break. This prior 'as' forms the basis of the response to the encounter, insofar as the surprise malfunction i ncites us to reinterpret our grasp of the tool 's possibilities. This interpretation can then either stay at the hermeneutic level, or be developed apophantically by using assertions to d raw out the causal capacities the tool possesses independently of its functional role; or rather, independently of its status as a tool. It is in this sense that the encounter with the broken tool amounts to a transition between the tool as ready-to-hand and the tool as present-at-hand : it is an invitation to a different form of understanding. I )> ;o ;:: )> z rn I m 0 m Gl Gl m ;o

48 Cl:'. w (.') (.') w 0 w I (J) z <( ::;; Cl:'. <( I What all of this reveals is that Harman's reading cannot be an interpretation of the substance of Heidegger's ideas-even one that Heidegger himself would disagree with. It is possible to read t h i n kers agai nst themselves. but this req u i res that there is some essential element present in their work that the work itself fails to live up to.41 But the element that Har­ man tries to unearth in Heidegger's tool-analysis is not even there.42 The only reason he can propose to extend the inten­ tional relation between Dasein and its tools to cover all interac­ tions between entities is that he has stripped this relation of everything that makes it recognisably Heideggerian . He has excised the structure of projective understanding wholesale, and thereby completely abandoned the semantic and epis­ temological framework within which the encounter with the tool is described . This becomes clear once we ask a question such as: J ust what would it be for a screen door to encounter a knife as a knife?43 Harman has an answer-that it would consist in the door's being affected by the knife in a way that is common to all knives-yet this does not warrant his using the 41. This is a hermeneutic strategy that Brandom calls de re interpretation, as opposed to de dicta interpretation: the attempt to be faithful to the sub­ ject matter, rather than the words used to express it (Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead, chapter 1 ) . 42. Another point t o make here about Harman's reading qua reading i s that even if there were some evidence that Heidegger did see the tool-analysis in something resembling this way, then it would still be far-fetched, given the extent of the other aspects of Heidegger's work it invalidates: theory, mood, space, time, etc. (cf. Tool-Being, §§4-7). Harman gives us a long list of fea­ tures of his thought about which Heidegger can say nothing specific, despite his sincere and extensive attempts to do so. The sheer amount of Heidegger's work that Harman's reading disqualifies thus constitutes a pretty good reduc­ tio ad absurdum of it as a reading of Heidegger, even if we ignore the misun­ derstandings just discussed. 43. This is Harman's own example ( Tool-Being, 30-32) .

word 'encounter' in an intentional sense. The screen door has 49 nothing that could qualify it as having anything like an aware­ ness of generality. There is no hermeneutic 'as' circumscribing its engagements with things. This leaves us saying that what it is for a screen door to interact with a knife qua knife is for it to be affected in the way that knives affect screen doors-an empty tautology unworthy of metaphysical scrutiny.44 I I . T H E ARG U M E N T FROM EXECUTI O N The principal a rg u ment derived from the tool-analysis i n Tool- Being is what I have called t h e a rg ument from exe­ cution. This a rg u ment aims to establish that the reality of entities consists i n their execution (or tool-being), and on this basis to demonstrate that they withdraw from all epistemic and causal contact. I nsofar as it is supposed to reconstruct Heidegger's own phenomenological analysis, the argument is presented as a phenomenological description .45 Its aim is to reveal the absolute invisibil ity of objects qua execution, by presenting three interrelated characterisations of execution: as causal capacity (or 'effect' ) , as pure action (or 'impact ' ) . and as functional role (or 'reference') . However. as already noted , Harman provides no clarification regarding the nature of his phenomenological method . nor how it might be expected to yield metaphysical results. This is complicated by the fact that many of Harman's claims are patently more metaphysical than phenomenological. This raises the possibility that in some cases he has simply i mported metaphysical assumptions instead of collecting phenomenological evidence. 44. For a further example of Harman's attempt to universalise the as-struc­ ture in this way, see his discussion of tectonic plates towards the end of Too/­ Being (221-2 ) . 45. Tool-Being, 18. _, I m )> ;u Gl c ;;:: m z _, ,, ;u 0 ;;:: m x m 0 c _, 0 z

50 We will thus have to be very careful to keep all the elements of his analyses separate in reconstructing their logical form. z 0 >= :::J (.) w x w ::;,: 0 0:: Harman's take on Heidegger's phenomenological analysis opens by specifying its object : our ubiquitous encounters with the entities that we ' use' in the course of living . H is break with Heidegger's analysis occurs already in this first paragraph: LL f­ z w ::;,: :::J (.'J 0:: <( w I f- Heidegger demonstrates that our primary interaction with beings comes through ' using ' them. through simply counting on them in an unthematic way. For the most part. objects are implements taken for granted , a vast environmental backdrop supporting the thin and volatile layer of our explicit activities. All human action finds itself lodged amidst countless items of supporting equipment: the most nuanced debates in a laboratory stand at the mercy of a silent bedrock of floorboards, bolts, ventilators, gravity, and atmospheric oxygen. 46 This break is subtle, and does not become completely apparent until a few pages later, when Harman explicitly substitutes the word 'rely' for 'use'.47 The examples that Harman focuses on are indicative of this shift. Gone is the emphasis upon equip­ ment actively deployed toward a goal (e.g . , hammers. cars, signals, etc . ) , to be replace d with a focus u pon 'equipment' necessary to passively sustain a given state (e.g . , ventilators, gravity, oxygen, etc.). It is not that Heidegger is not concerned with some examples of this kind-sustaining a state is as eligible a goal as achieving one-but rather that Harman nar­ rows the scope of the analysis by collapsing active use into passive reliance, while simultaneously expanding its scope to 46. Ibid .. 18. 47. Ibid . , 20.

include cases of dependence that lack anything that could be 51 construed as awareness of the thing depended u pon. This move enables execution to take on the role of persistence we saw earlier. and at the same time facilitates the univer­ salisation of intentionality to encompass all objects, not to mention the flaying of Heidegger's account of i ntentionality that accompanies it. We can already see the pretense of phenomenology slip­ ping here. Harman has subtly shifted the focus of his analysis from our practical comportment toward things to our causal dependence u pon them. We are i nvited to conclude that phenomenological description is as apt to describe my relation to my internal organs, the geological strata that I stand u pon, or the delicate balance of environmental factors necessary for life on earth as it is to describe my relation to the various socially delineated props I passively engage in carrying out everyday tasks. This shift hinges upon a delicate ambiguity with regard to the sense in which encounters with things can be ' unconscious' or 'unthematic'.�8 It consists in misunderstanding what Heidegger calls circumspection ( Umsicht) . Heidegger's intention in introducing this sort of 'unthematic' understanding was to provide a phenomenological analysis of comportments that lacked a specific kind of awareness, rather than lacking awareness as such . He would not consider my relation to my internal organs to be an intentional relation unless it consisted in some implicit grasp of general ways i n which they are involved in carrying out practical activities, either as obstacles (e.g . an awareness of my fickle digestive system) or resources (e.g . , the metabolic control achieved b y certai n yog ic masters) , 48. It is also helped by an ambiguity in the sense of 'reliance', which can be read eit.her as an intentional relation involving an expectation regarding what­ ever is relied upon, or as a matter of brute causal dependence. _, I m )> ;u G) c � m z _, ,, ;u 0 � m x m 0 c _, 0 z

52 or some explicit grasp of their general modal features (e.g . , the theoretical understanding o f a biologist or surgeon). For z 0 r­ :::J u w x w ::;; 0 0:: LL r­ z w ::;; :::J C9 0:: « w I r- Heidegger's concern with the ' unconscious' encounter as awareness without attention. Harman substitutes a concern with it as dependence without awareness. Bearing all of this in mind. we can turn to the first step i n Harman's analysis. T h i s is his claim that what w e encounter i n relying upon equipment is its causal capacity t o produce the specific effect that we rely u pon . This is his first characterisa­ tion of the execution that constitutes the reality of the tool, and he vehemently opposes it to the idea that the toot consists in the ways humans expect to use it: Equipment is not effective ' because people use it'; on the con­ trary, it can only be used because it is capable of an effect. of . inflicting some kind of blow on reality. In short. the tool isn't ' used'-it is. 49 On the face of it. this is a perfectly good inference-successful reliance upon a thing demands that it possess the causal capac­ ity to produce the effect relied u pon-but the way in which it is introduced and used by Harman is questionable precisely insofar as it is metaphysical rather than phenomenological. Harman is already straying into metaphysics in describing the thing as consisting in this capacity, rather than simply possessing it. and he will stray further when he fleshes out his characterisation of this capacity qua execution. He does not linger in this register though . He rapidly returns to phenomenology when he insists u pon the invisibility of this capacity. 50 But invisibility is apparent '19. Tool-Being, 20. 50. Ibid., 21.

only when we focus u pon precisely those u n - Heideggerian 53 cases that Harman has smuggled in (e.g . . the invisibility of my organs) . This paradoxical revelation of invisibility essentially consists i n our discovery that we really have no awareness of those things u pon which we depend without being aware of it-at least. that is, until we turn our phenomenological gaze u pon them . This has no force whatsoever, because there is no correlation between dependence and awareness either way. Prima facie, it is entirely possible for me to be aware or not aware of the things I depend on, to varying degrees.51 Becom­ ing aware of the myriad environmental factors that make our lives possible does not in and of itself alter our dependence upon them. Let us move deeper into the nature of execution and its purported i nvisibility, then. The second characterisation of execution is its status as pure action, and this has two aspects: Firstly, the equipment is never what it is simply because it is capable of an effect. but must also enact this effect at every moment: ' Equipment is forever in action, constructing each moment the sustaining habitat where our explicit awareness is on the move.'52 Secondly, this perpetual action is unitary: its effect cannot be broken down into subsidiary actions that might be held in reserve. It must be 'an agent thoroughly deployed in reality, as an impact irreducible to any list of prop­ erties that might be tabulated by an observer'. 53 There are at 51. No doubt some will claim that although there may indeed be degrees of awareness, this never amounts to complete awareness, and that this is suf­ ficient to underwrite the putatively 'absolute' character of invisibility. This is a entirely separate argument. which I will deal with in the next subsection as the argument tram excess. 52. Tool-Being, 18. 53. Ibid . , 21. -< I m )> ;o Gl c ;:: m z -< 'T1 ;o 0 ;:: m x m 0 c -< 0 z

54 least two distinct tensions inherent in this characterisation: a modal tension between possibility and actuality, and a temporal z 0 f­ ::0 u UJ x UJ ::;; 0 0:: LL C­ Z UJ ::;; ::0 (') 0:: « UJ I f- tension between dynamism and stasis. The former comes from the contrast between this and the first characterisation of execution in terms of capacity, i nsofar as it flattens whatever possible effects a thing might have i nto its current actual effects. The latter comes from the characterisation of the thing as always already in action, an act whose occurrence is such that we only encounter it in a state of silent repose, or diachronic transition so pure it is the very essence of syn­ chronic persistence. These tensions are seemingly constitutive for the invisibility of equipment. Try as we might to understand any specific capacity, we never reach the unitary effect that silently whirs behind it: Whatever is visible of the table in any given instant can never be its tool-being, never its readiness-to-hand. However deeply we meditate on the table's act of supporting solid weights, however tenaciously we monitor its presence, any insight that is yielded will always be something quite distinct from this act itself. 54 Try as we might to understand the way an occurrence u nfolds, the things it involves are events already past yet ongoing: A tool exists in the manner of enacting itself: only derivatively can it be discussed or otherwise mulled over. Try as hard as we might to capture the hidden execution of equipment, we will always lag behind. 55 5"1 . Ibid. 55. Ibid . , 22.

Harman provokes us like a zen master wielding a koan: a pure 55 act rests behind all superficial acts. a pure actuality grounds all potential actualities. One hand claps slowly.56 It now seems we may have gone too deep after all. What should we make of these tensions within the account of execution from the perspective of the split between phenom­ enology and metaphysics? At best, they constitute a brute phenomenological description of dubious plausibility. Despite the general paradox of the accessibility of inaccessibility, and the more specific paradoxes of modality and temporality it poses, we might simply have to throw u p our arms and admit: ' Well , things do seem this way, just l ike he says ! ' Even so, we should have to be receptive to any analysis that could dissolve these seeming paradoxes. as opposed to using them for effect . At worst. they constitute a series of strange and strained metaphysical assumptions extending the reification of capacity carried out by the first characterisation. assumptions we are given anything but good reason to endorse. J ust what is really going on here? Harman seems to have transposed the phenomenological analysis of tools as deployed in actions-which he otherwise ignored in favour of passive dependence - into a metaphysics of tools as actions. This has a peculiar effect that can best be described as 'performative phenomenology'. The revelation of invisibility is merely an artefact of the way in which execution is i ntroduced . The general paradox is u nderwritten by the specific ones. We encounter the invisibility of equi pment as an ineffability engendered by the impossible tensions contained in the ways in which it is described . The supposed demonstration of epistemic inaccessibility is actually an elaborate numbing of 56. Before withdrawing into itself. and disappearing in a puff of metaphysics. __, I m )> :;IJ Gl c ;;: m z __, "TI :;IJ 0 ;;: m x m 0 c __, 0 z

56 our epistemic faculties, performed by multiplying the incompat­ ible aspects of the mysterious withdrawn tool. Single hands z 0 >-­ ::J u U.J x U.J don't clap after all.57 :::; 0 "' LI. >-­ z U.J :::; ::J (!) "' <{ U.J I >-- two characterisations by articulating the effect which the We now turn to the third and final characterisation of execution: as functional role. This builds upon the previous capacity produces in its pure action as a means to an end of some sort. This is how Harman cashes out Heidegger's account of reference ( Verweis) : he takes every entity to refer to those things whose persistence depends u pon its own . T h e reference o f a thing's execution is another thing whose execution it sustains. Reference and dependence are thus u nified i nto a single relation of functional dependence. This is responsible for Harman's machinic descriptions of entities, insofar as it underwrites his discussion of dependence relations i n mereological terms, not merely as between part and whole, but as between component and system . What happens here is that the causal capacities actualised in composition are transformed into normative functions through being norma­ tively u nderwritten by the whole they actually compose. The various girders, nuts, and bolts that compose a bridge are simultaneously depended upon by the bridge and captured in executing their functional role in sustaining the bridge as a systematic effect upon which further things depend. 58 It is this interpretation of reference relations that collapses Heidegger's account of world into a simple totality, insofar as it takes them to hold exclusively between individuals, u nderstood in terms of their actual states, rather than (as Heidegger intends) within a complex horizon that i nvolves relations between both types and i nstances, understood in terms of their possible states. 57. It turns out to have been a puff of logic. 58. Toof-Being. 22-25.

Accordi ng to Harman, this characterisation implies the sec- 57 ond fundamental aspect of Heidegger's tool-analysis: what he calls the tool's totality as opposed to its i nvisibility. To u nderstand this, it is important to see that Harman takes functional dependence to extend beyond intuitive forms of mereological dependence (e.g . , my dependence upon my internal organs) , to include things like environmental depend­ ence (e.g . , my dependence u pon external factors such as gravity and oxygen) , and even goes so far as to incorporate negative dependence relations (e.g . , my dependence u pon a meteorite not falling from space into me) . Moreover, although both dependence and reference are asymmetric relations, they go in opposite directions: if x depends on y then y refers to x, and each relation is transitive, meaning that if x depends on y and y depends on z. then x depends on z, and therefore z also refers to x. The world becomes a network of functional dependence relations in which each specific entity is individu­ ated through its location relative to everything else. The bridge is what it is in virtue of depending u pon precisely what it actu­ ally depends upon, and supporting precisely what it actually supports; and the same is true for every nut, bolt. girder, and environmental condition u pon which it depends, not to men­ tion everything upon which they depend, ad infinitum; the same is true also for every passing traveller, supply chain, or local business the bridge exists in aid of, and everything they in turn support , ad infinitum . This converts the world from a simple totality of disparate individuals into a u nified individual in its own right: the plurality of local systems of execution becomes an i ntegrated network of components in a single g lobal system or 'world-machine'. 59 The numerous ends at 59. Tool-Being, 33. -< I m > "" Gl c ;:: m z -< "T1 "" 0 ;:: m x m () c -< 6 z

58 which execution aims are subsumed within a single system of z 0 the system itself. ::i u w x w and temporal tensions we have already uncovered . This one ends, the ultimate purpose of which can only be to sustain ;:: :::; 0 a:: LL ,_ z w :::; ::i 0 a:: <( w I ,_ This produces a relational tension alongside the modal is more complicated since it arises from a conflict between the relational holism Harman attributes to He [degger and the radical individualism that he aims to derive from the principles u pon which it is founded . The tension consists in Harman's attempt to convert holism into individualism by transforming execution from something individuated through the functional dependence relations it is bound u p in, to something prior to these relations which makes them possible. This makes the bridge's execution a condition of its relations to the economy of actions it supports, rather than something that consists in those relations. The tension becomes manifest in the way Harman connects totality and invisibility through the char­ acterisation of execution as functional role. His attempt to derive invisibility from functionality is far more reminiscent of Heidegger than the other arguments for invisibility we have discussed : 'The function or reference of the tool is effective not as an explicit sign or symbol , but as something that vanishes into the work to which it is a ssigned .'6° For Heidegger, our attention is i nevitably drawn towards the immediate ends of our activity, rather than the various subordinate tasks and the means they i nvolve. We focus upon what we are doing with the hammer-putting up shelves-rather than the mechanics of the hammer and our use of it. Nevertheless, this phenom­ enological insight is not meant to preclude the possibility of our turning our attention to any of these easily overlooked details. 60. Ibid . . 25. my emphasis.

Our awareness of the task as an articulated whole enables us 59 to shift our attention back to any aspect of it. We shift focus to our grip upon the hammer. thereby adjusting it to optimise the force we can achieve at the odd angle the space allows us. Harman's reading warps this insight: the activity becomes the thing, and the focus of our attention upon the end of the activity becomes the vanishing of our awareness of the thing into whatever it sustains. This mutates further when exposed to Harman's totalising logic of reference: all awareness vanishes into the world-machine, as the unitary activity within which everything plays its sustaining role.61 So far. then. Harman appears to have derived the invisibility of everything except the world as a whole from his functional account of individuation. But perhaps the strangest move is yet to come, because he converts this claim about invisibility back into a claim about individuation: Every being is entirely absorbed into this world-system, assigned to further possibilities i n such a way that there could never be any singular end-point within the contexture of reference. in the strict sense, the world has no parts. 62 It is not merely the visibility of the parts but their distinctness that collapses into the whole - vanishing becomes absorption. This is highly problematic, because it uses an account of the articulation of systems into distinct components to deny that there is any such articulation at all. It presu pposes the fact that there are distinct entities with differentiated capacities that can be combined and configured in a variety of ways, only 61. Tool-Being, 32-3. 62. Ibid . , '13. � I m )> :0 G'J c ;;;: m z � 'TI :0 0 ;;;: m x m 0 c � 0 z

ao to interpret this combination and configuration in such a way as to deny the distinctness that it is predicated u pon. z 0 f­ :::0 0 w x w 2 0 Q'. LL C­ Z w 2 :::0 (.9 Q'. "' w I f- We would be forgiven for insisting u pon a reductio ad absurdum of some. if not most . of H a rman's premises at this point. He does indeed intend to perform a reductio of sorts, but it is not the one we might expect-and indeed . should i nsist u pon .63 H e ignores the i nconsistency at the heart of his account of functionality and i nstead focuses u pon the fact that his account of invisibility contradicts the 'existence of [distinct) objects as a g laring experiential fact'.64 He combines this with a further contradiction he takes to be implied by the account: ' If [this) were the case, physical causation could never occur, since there would be no individual objects, but only a single system. with no explanations for why this system should ever alter'.65 Harman treats the apparent existence of diachronic causal i nteraction (as opposed to synchronic causal dependence) and a multiplicity of distinct objects (as opposed to a singular world-machine) as two sides of the same problem. What is Harman's reductio then ? What is it that converts Heidegger's purported holism i nto the radical individualism of OOP? It is the introduction of the break between the real and the sensual-which is to say, the core of the account of withdrawal. This emerges in Harman's i nterpretation of the as-structure and the way he identifies it with the broken-tool encounter.66 The principal motivation for this theoretical sup­ plement is its ability to diffuse the live contradictions hovering 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid . , 34 . 66. Ibid. , §4.

in the background . However, it will only be warranted if it can 51 i ntegrate the three facets of the account of execution into the individualist account of substance, at least in outline, and thereby dissolve the relational tension between this account and its functional fou ndations. How this is supposed to work, and whether it can also dissolve the accompanying modal and temporal tensions, is now our principal concern. We shall tackle it one contradiction at a time. O n the one hand , Harman aims to resolve the con­ tradiction between functional tota lity and apparent indi­ viduality by reconceiving the very notion of appearance itself. H a rman's concern with i nvisibility u p until this point has t urned upon an implicit conception of awareness, which, as we have seen, has not yet been made explicit through the provision of a phenomenological methodology. Nevertheless, the invisibility of things has been 'shown' through purportedly phenomenological analyses of the scope of this awareness. What now changes is that the phenomenal aspect of this implicit conception is explicitly severed from the epis­ temic aspect: awareness is split in two, so that multiple individu­ als may phenomenally appear, even while the singular whole from which they appear epistemically withdraws. We can see the hammer, but we can never know the i ntricate system that harbours its h idden essence. This rift constitutes the differ­ ence between the hammer as presence and the hammer as execution, the hammer as hammer and the hammer in itself, and the malfunctioning hammer and the functioning hammer, respectively. It permits the conversion from invisible to visible i n the encounter with the broken tool precisely because the u nderlying execution of the tool is not really made visible. The malfunction throws off an epistemically irrelevant husk that can at best hint at the silent reality of proper functioning. -4 I m )> ,, Gl c ;;;: m z -4 ,, ,, 0 ;;;: m x m 0 c -4 6 z

62 On the other hand , Harman aims to resolve the contradiction between functional fixity and apparent change by u niting the z 0 f­ ::J u w x w question of causal interaction and the question of phenomenal presence. Although this is often hinted at, it only becomes completely explicit towards the end of Tool-Being itself: 2 0 °' LL f­ z w 2 ::J (') °' <( w I f- [T]he time has come to admit to the reader that I have been guilty of a deliberate over-simplification [ ... ] In fact. it is impermissible to replace the tool/broken tool distinction with the difference between causality and visibility. For it turns out that even brute causation already belongs to the realm of presence-at-hand. 67 If we accept Harman's identification of presence with malfunc­ tion, then the above makes a certain amount of sense: If the world is taken to have a fixed order because it is constituted by a network of fu nctional dependence relations, then any change to this order must amount to a break with these rela­ tions, and thus to a malfunction of some sort. This would make the question of i nteraction/presence a matter of explaining how components rebel against the systems in which they are seemingly subsumed , so as to generate the abundance of indi­ viduality in our phenomenal experience. This is not a question Harman takes the tool-analysis to answer. He simply takes it to have posed the problem in the correct terms. Neverthe­ less, he insists that the analysis implies that any solution must move beyond the appearance of individuality to the reality of individuality, because entities can break with the functional order in which they are enmeshed only if they hold something in reserve that is not determined by this order.68 This is where 67. Toof-Being, 221 . 68. Ibid . , 229-30.

the relational tension becomes most acute: J ust how is the 63 account of execution that implies holism to be modified so as to permit the individualism it seemingly demands? The tension is more serious than might initially be apparent. This is because Harman extends the identification of pres­ ence with causality beyond diachronic i nteraction to i nclude the cases of synchronic dependence u pon which his initial characterisations of execution were built. This can be seen in his example of a bulky metal appliance sitting u pon a frozen lake: ' When the lake supports the appliance. this act of sup­ porting u nfolds entirely within the as-structure. not within the kingdom of tool-being .'69 It is this move that enables Harman to convert the distinction between execution and presence into the distinction between su bstance and relation . i nsofar as it enables him to treat all causal relations in the same way. Whatever is held in reserve in order to change the relations of functional (and thus causal) dependence that entities are bound up in, withdraws from all current relations. as the sub­ stance that u nderlies them. However. as Harman continues: 'This raises the fol lowing question: If the fact that the frozen lake supports an object is not its tool-being. then what is? '70 As he puts it slightly earlier: I n short, tool-being is not at all what we have thought it was up till now. It must lie at a still deeper level than that of force or relation. It is no longer an effect as opposed to an appearance. · but rather an executant being that is neither of these. 71 69. Ibid . . 223. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid . , 222. � I m :l> ::0 Gl c s: m z � ,, ::0 0 s: m x m 0 c � 6 z

We are once more told what execution is not, but we are still none the wiser about just what it is. z 0 f­ ::J 0 w x w ::;; 0 Q'. LL f­ z w ::;; ::J (9 Q'. <( w I f- Here is where we stand then: The relational tension consists in the fact that Harman's individualist conception of execution as substance is incompatible with the holistic conception of execution as functional role from which it is derived ; but he does not make clear which aspects of the latter conception are abandoned , and thus precisely how the former differs from it, a part from its purported individual­ ism. He does not stop characterising execution in terms of function.72 He continues to think of objects in terms of sys­ tematic u nity.73 When he needs to talk about the substantial reserve that necessitates i ndividuality, he simply turns to his earlier characterisations of execution: it stands independent of all relations as an actuality 'richer than all possibility'74 and prior to all effects as a 'real execution, silently resting i n its vac u u m-sealed actuality'.75 Far from d issolving the modal and temporal tensions discussed above, he i ntensifies them, and he nowhere provides an account of how the functional character of execution is to be curtailed , let alone how it is to be integrated with its status as capacity and act. When they are acknowledged , the three tensions we have located (modal , temporal, and relational) are presented a s paradoxical intuitions that open u p room for further metaphysical speculation, but, at best, they are an argument left hanging .76 Harman has not 72. Cf. Ibid . , 285. 73. Cf. Ibid . , 288. 74 . Ibid . , 229. 75. Ibid . , 283. 76. Harman explicitly presents two unresolved paradoxes at the end of Tool-Being (287-8) , but they are not the tensions I have outlined here, which emerge more sporadically throughout the work.

yet succeeded in discharging the contradictions that arise 65 from his assumptions. He has failed to provide us with a good reason to adopt his partial reconstruction of what he takes to be Heidegger's inconsistent system, rather than simply rejecting its core presu ppositions. How does this reflect u pon the relation between phe­ nomenology and metaphysics? Let 's take one last look. I think the core methodological issues emerge from the attempt to provide an account of modality. Here it is useful to contrast Harman's approach with the brief summary of Heidegger we provided earlier. Heidegger provides us with an intricate modal epistemology. He builds a phenomenological framework within which he analyses both our understanding of the entities we encounter in terms of the normative features they acquire through the practices we are socialised into, the u nthematic understanding of the causal features of these entities that is implicit in this, and the various levels of thematic understanding that can be developed out of it. His analysis of the encounter with the broken tool is a subtle demonstration of the interface between these levels of modal understanding . By contrast, Harman's approach can only be described as modal mysteria nism. It begins with phenomenological descriptions of our experience of things, from which it derives a pseudo-Heideggerian functional vocabulary, but almost imme­ diately converts this into a metaphysical inquiry into our causal relations with things, i n the process hypostatizing this func­ tional vocabulary into a metaphysical teleology. It is important to emphasise how contentious this move is. There are deep and divisive arguments about the reality of functions running from Plato and Aristotle, through Leibniz and Spinoza , Kant and Hegel, all the way to contemporary debates regarding the correct interpretation of Darwin. Harman makes this move not --< I m :» :;o G) c s: m z --< 'TI :;o 0 s: m x m 0 c --< 0 z

66 (/) (/) LJ.J () x LJ.J ::;;; 0 "' lL >­ z LJ.J ::;;; ::J (!) "' <t LJ.J I >- by providing a compelling reason for it. but by simply ignoring an important methodological distinction. As we have seen, the other claims he makes about the metaphysical basis of causal capacities are equally methodologically suspect . Where Hei­ degger does his best to delineate the modal relations between normative functions and causal capacities. showing both how they differ and how they are related , Harman systematically conftates them under the single heading of execution, which he then fails to sufficiently integrate. Thus his purported justifica­ tion for epistemic inaccessibility on the basis of these modal features (excess) is stuck halfway between a questionable attempt to phenomenologically delimit phenomenal access (the revelation of i nvisibility) , and a dubious metaphysical reinterpretation of phenomenal access itself that simultane­ ously undercuts his phenomenological pretensions (the split in awareness) and fails to provide a coherent account of the inaccessible (the unresolved tensions) . The philosophical framework he builds in Tool-Being leaves us with no grasp of what tool-being is-and simply to decree that 'that's the point ! ' is to lapse into mysterianism. I l l . T H E A R G U M E N T F R O M EXC E S S The other argument that Harman associates with t h e tool­ analysis, which I have called the argument from excess, can be fou nd intermingled with elements of the argument from execution at several poi nts in Tool-Being and elsewhere,77 but it becomes the dominant strain of arg u ment by the time of his presentation of the tool-analysis in Philosophy in 77. Cf. Tool-Being, 96, 98, 223: 'A Fresh Loo k at Zuhandenheit', in Towards Speculative Realism. 5"1-5: The Revival of Metaphysics in Continental Phi­ losophy', in Towards Speculative Realism. 116-17.

the Making.78 It is fairly brief. and its conclusion is more often 67 simply asserted than properly derived from its premises. but it is possible to reconstruct a reasonably concise version of it on the basis of these examples. I will first quote the rel­ evant sections from the Meillassoux book, to provide a basis for reconstruction : __, I m )> Al Gl c � m z __, '1 In Heideggerian terms it is true that phenomena in consciousness fail to do justice to the full depths of things, to their inscrutable being withdrawn from all presence. Yet it is a/so the case that the practical handling of entities fails to do them justice as well ( ... ] [ H ] uman theory and human praxis are both translations or distortions of the subterranean reality of [tool-being] . which is no more exhausted by sentient action than by sentient thought. 79 Here Harman opens with an outright assertion of the thesis of withdrawal, but he frames it in two important ways. He articulates it as a matter of the i nexhaustibility of tool-being, and he identifies theoretical u nderstanding and practical use in terms of their inability to exhaust it. The framing of with­ drawal in terms of inexhaustibility will form the centrepiece of the argu ment . whereas the identification of theory and praxis paves the way for the more controversial identification of knowledge and causation. This is fol lowed by a sort of retroactive argument for withdrawal that works from within this frame: All of these activities could possibly be linked under the term 'intentionality', but whereas the intentionality of Brentano and 78. Philosophy in the Making, 135-6. 79. Ibid., 135. Al 0 � m x () m (J) (J)

H usse�I is a matter of immanent objectivity, we are now con­ 68 cerned with a transcendent kind of object. It is true that the (/) (/) w (.) x w hammer takes on a specific configuration both for the con­ struction worker and for the scientific specialist on hammers :::; 0 ct: (assuming the latter person exists). But what is most relevant here is the transcendent hammer that startles us with surprises, u. f­ z w :::; ::::> <.'J ct: <t U.J I f- shattering in our hands or rotting and rusting more quickly than expected. The present-at-hand hammer cannot explain these sudden surprises, and hence by subtraction we arrive at the notion of a withdrawn, subterranean tool that enters into rela­ tion with me and other animate and inanimate entities as wen. 80 What we have here is an argument that aims to proceed from the obvious fact that the causal capacities of an object can exceed our understanding of them (and thereby 'surprise' us) to the contentious claim that we cannot encounter the real objects in which this excess consists, but only the distinct sensual objects that they withdraw behind. What fol lows is my best attempt to reconstruct the transi­ tion between the two. I shall begin by splitting the obvious fact into two fairly u ncontentious claims: ( i ) Our knowledge of things does not exhaust all of their features. There is more to them than we actually know. (ii) Our causal interactions with things do not exhaust all their capacities. There is more to them than we actualise. Harman obviously adopts the example of the hammer's causal capacities exceeding our grasp from the analysis of the broken 80. Ibid . . 136.

tool ; but its real i mport comes from the manner in which it 69 straddles the divide between ( i ) and ( i i ) . Although his various presentations will emphasise one or the other, the justifica­ tion of the thesis of withdrawal depends upon equivocating between these two claims i n some fashion, be it by leaning u pon aspects of the a rg ument fro m execution (e. g . , i nter­ preting praxis as reliance) or by simply treating the identity of intentional and causal relations as a given . This equivocation exemplifies the collapse of phenomenology and metaphysics into one another discussed earlier. What is important is that the combination of (i) and ( i i ) gets interpreted in a somewhat more contentious way than either of them: (iii) Our knowledge/interactions can never exhaust all the fea­ tures/capacities of things. There is more to them than we could possibly encounter. This move converts a factual excess of features/capaci­ ties into an essential excess. The move is strictly illicit, but, although it leads to a stronger claim than either (i) or ( i i ) , it is still not all that contentious. There are many who would agree with (iii) for independent reasons, or simply because it is reasonably i ntuitive. The really contentious claims are those that are subsequently inferred from ( i i i ) : ( iv) O u r knowledge/interactions c a n never exhaust a l l the fea­ tures of a thing, because there is some feature of every thing qua thing that we can never encounter. This move aims to explain the necessity of excess by locating it i n a feature common to all things, as opposed to some­ thing which varies from thing to thing. It holds that excess is _, I m )> "' G) c ;;:: m z _, ,, "' 0 ;;:: m x 0 m (fJ (fJ

70 essential because there is an essential feature of entities that is excessive. This makes sense if one demands an intrinsic Cf) Cf) w u x w explanation of excess which locates the reason for the excess :;;: 0 0:: which locates it in the encountering object. When the latter is lL f­ z w :;;: ::0 (.') 0:: "" w I f- in the encountered object , as opposed to an extrinsic one understood as a knowing subject, the extrinsic explanation of excess has traditionally taken the name of finitude. This posits an internal limit u pon the cognitive abilities of the subject that precludes it from knowing objects in ful l . This limit need not be i nterpreted in terms of some common qualitative excess, but could be seen as a disparate quantitative excess. It could sim­ ply be the case that the subject can only grasp a finite number of the infinity of features belonging to each thing, but that there is no particular feature that is in principle u ngraspable. Harman insists u pon an intrinsic explanation, as can be seen in the above quote, but it is important to recognise that this is underwritten by the equivocation between knowledge and causation: 'I am convinced that objects far exceed their i nteractions with other objects, and the question is both what this excess is, and where it is.'81 In other words, he takes the issue of essential excess to be equivalent to the issue of sub­ stantial reserve discussed in the argument from execution .82 The localisation of epistemic excess is thus predicated u pon the localisation of causal excess. This sets the stage for the final (and most contentious) inference: (v) Our knowledge/interactions can never exhaust a thing, because we can never encounter the essence of the thing. We only 81. 'The Revival of Metaphysics in Continental Philosophy', in Towards Speculative Realism, 117. 82. This is precisely how the arguments intertwine in Tool-Being (223 ) .

encounter the (sensual) appearance of the thing, never its 71 (real) being. This move converts the essential excess i nto an excessive essence. Harman takes the common essential feature of all things that cannot be encountered to be what things are in themselves, or essence as such. This is supposed to warrant the absolute distinction between the real and the sensual, i nsofar as it implies that whatever epistemic/causal contact there is with a thing must be contact with something other than what it really is. It thereby moves from localisation to isolation. However, this exploits the same equivocation as ( iv) , albeit in reverse. insofar as it makes sense of causal isolation in terms of epistemic isolation. While it is easy to u nderstand withdrawal as the impossibility of direct epistemic access, it is much less clear how we are to u nderstand independence as the impossibility of direct causal contact. There is a clear quantitative line from some access to no access, because we can i ntuitively grasp what it would be to completely fail to know anything about a thing despite seeming to; but there is no such clear line from some contact to no contact, because we cannot intuitively grasp what it would be to completely fail to activate any of a thing's capacities. despite seeming to. Of course, this is not how Harman conceives of independ­ ence. He bypasses the quantitative considerations involved in ( i ) to ( iv) by treating that which u nderlies causal i nteraction as a unitary execution as opposed to a multiplicity of distinct capacities. The actualisation of capacities t h rough causal contact is then treated as something qualitatively disti nct from the independent substance which u nderlies them. much as the appearance of features through phenomenal access is treated as qualitatively distinct from the withdrawn essence -i I m )> ;o G) c ;:: m z -i ,., ;o 0 ;:: m x 0 m (/) (/)

72 (/) (/) w u x w ::;; 0 0: u.. f-­ z w ::;; ::> (') 0: -0: w I f-- which u nderlies them . This qualitative break is what divides execution and causation into distinct forms of actuality ( modal tension) and activity (temporal tension ) . The equivocation between knowledge and causation thus disguises an illicit leap from quantitative to qualitative excess, along with the mysterian tensions it invokes. The overal l shape of this argument is thus another reductio ad absurdum of sorts. It begins by assuming that there is partial contact between objects, only to try to demonstrate that its essentially partial character implies the impossibility of any contact at all. It slides easily from quantity to quality on the back of Harman's characteristic u niversalisation of inten­ tional relation, but as with the argument from execution, this conceals problems that warrant rejecting the terms i n which it is framed . However, there is a further aspect of the move from quantity to quality worth considering: But the following objection to this theory often arises: why exag­ gerate and say that things cannot touch at all? Does it not seem instead that things partly make contact with each other? [ ... ] The problem is that objects cannot be touched 'in part.' because there is a sense in which objects have no parts. 83 Harman is very insistent that withdrawal is complete. Our knowledge of things is not merely limited , but entirely inad­ equate. Objects are foreclosed to us. But here he presents the mereological missing link in his reasoning from quantitative excess to qualitative excess. It seems that he takes the idea that a whole is more than its parts to imply that the whole is entirely distinct from its parts, such that to know the parts is 83. The Quadruple Object (Winchester: Zero Books. 2010) . 73.

not to know the whole- not even partially, as it were. This is 73 somewhat questionable. but it is not the whole story, since it only works if we treat the features and/or capacities of objects as if they are parts. This provides a path between ( iv) and (v) , but it is a highly dubious one. I V. T H E A R G U M E N T F R O M I D E N T I TY The final argument. which I call the argument from identity, will require even more reconstruction than the argument from excess. This is because, although it is frequently invoked , it is usually presented without a detailed analysis of how it is supposed to work. Though it does appear i n the context of the tool-analysis,84 usually in conjunction with some form of the argument from excess, it also appears independently, 65 as the snappiest and most condensed statement of the case for withdrawal. The most explicit presentation it has so far received is in Harman's criticism of James Ladyman and Don Ross's Every Thing Must Go, which I will quote at length: Let's imagine that we were able to gain exhaustive knowledge of all properties of a tree (which I hold to be impossible, but never mind that for the moment). It should go without saying that even such knowledge would not itself be a tree. Our knowledge would not grow roots or bear fruit or shed leaves, at least not in a . literal sense. Even in the case of God , the exhaustive knowledge of a tree and creation of a tree would have to be two separate acts. Now, it has sometimes been objected to this point that it is a straw man. After all, who confuses knowledge of a tree 84. Cf. Tool-Being, 224 ; Philosophy in the Making, 136. 85. Cf. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 83, 103; Prince of Networks, 132; The Quad­ ruple Object. 28, 73. --< I m )> ;lJ Gl c ;:: m z --< 'T1 ;lJ 0 ;:: 0 m z --< =< -<

with an actual tree? The answer. of course. is that no one does. 74 since no one could openly identify a thing with knowledge of it >­ I­ and still keep a straight face. Yet the point is not that people ;:: z w 0 defend this view openly, which they do not. Rather. the point is that many people uphold a model of the real that entails that � 0 (>'. "­ I­ z w � ::::J (!) (>'. ..: w I I- knowledge of a tree and a real tree would be one.and the same. and hence their views are refuted by reductio ad absurdum. Namely, if someone holds that there is an isomorphic relationship between knowledge and reality, such that reality can be fully mathematized. then it also follows that a perfect mathematical model of a thing should be able to step into the world and do the labor of that thing. But this is absurd . 86 The essence of this argument is the attempt to derive the impossibility of complete knowledge of a thing from the onto­ logical distinction between a thing and our knowledge of it. Although it sometimes appears that this invocation of non­ identity is an argument for withdrawal proper. it is really an argument for the epistemic component of premise (iii) of the argument from excess. The rejection of complete knowledge must then be leveraged into a rejection of partial knowledge, as is clear from the article just quoted , in which the above section finishes with a short appeal to the mereological com­ ponent of the argument from excess discussed above.87 The inference from ontological distinction to the impos­ sibility of complete knowledge once more takes the form of a reductio ad absurdum. The principle that u nderlies it is the claim that complete knowledge of a thing would somehow 86. 'I am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed', in Society and Space. vol. 28 (2010). 788-9. 87. Ibid . , 789.

have to be identical to the thing, thereby contradicting onto- 75 logical distinction. It is this principle which is nowhere given a detailed analysis, and which therefore we must reconstruct. The major problem we face here is that Harman's use of the term ' knowledge' is never really backed u p by an epistemology that could answer questions about the distinction between completeness and incompleteness, how this relates to the dis­ tinction between correctness and incorrectness, and whether knowledge of an object is composed of distinct representations. I have thus endeavoured to reconstruct the argument on the basis of reasonable assum ptions about what Harman means by knowledge, the most important of which is that although Harman tends to simply talk about knowledge of an object as a unitary phenomenon (e.g . , knowing a tree) , the notion of completeness/incompleteness implies that this must be composed out of correct representations of distinct features of the object (e.g . , its species, size, shape, colouration, location, etc.). I shall thus begin with some premises that codify this implicit epistemology: (i) For any representation of an object to be correct, the object must in some sense be the same as it is represented as being: I know the tree is an elm only if I represent it as being an elm and the tree is actually an elm, or if the tree-for-me and the tree-in­ itself are the same in the relevant respect. (ii) For a composite representation of an object to be correct, every distinct piece of it must be correct: my representation of the tree will not amount to knowing the tree if I misrepresent its structure, despite correctly representing its species, or if there is a difference between the tree-for-me and the tree-in-itself --< I m )> ::0 Gl c ;;: m z --< '1 ::0 0 ;;: 0 m z --< --< -<

76 (iii) For a composite representation of an object to be complete, it must be both correct and exhaustive: I know the tree com­ >­ I- i= z UJ 0 ::;; 0 0:: pletely only if there is no feature of the tree that is not accurately represented by some component of my representation of it as a whole. u.. 1-­ z UJ ::;; ::i ('J 0:: <( UJ I I- From these premises it is then possible to infer the following claim: (iv) For any knowledge of a n object to be complete, the object-for-us and the object-in-itself must be the same in every respect. We now only require Leibniz's principle of the identity of indis­ cernibles to reach the principle from which our contradiction is derived : (v) For any knowledge of an object to be complete,- the object­ for-us and the object-in-itself must be identical. This means that, as long as we have good reason to think that the object-for-us and the object-in-itself must be ontologically distinct, the reductio will work. Harman's argument depends upon the self-evidence of this fact. However, if we dig i nto this self-evidence, we will find that all is not as straightforward as it might initially seem. I take the i ntuitive basis for ontological distinction to be the conjunction of two ideas: what I ' l l call the possibil ity of error and the necessity of identity. The former is the idea that for any representation to be a representation there must be a possibility of its being incorrect, because correctness makes no sense without the possibility of incorrectness. The latter is

the generally accepted principle that if two things are identical n it is not possible that they could have been distinct. If we add these to (v) , we can derive ontological distinction by reductio ad absurdum. This is because, if the object-for-us and the object-in-itself were identical. then our knowledge of the object would be necessarily complete, and therefore its component representations would have to be infallible, thereby violating the possibility of error. However, the fact that this demonstration includes (v) should give us pause for thought. It indicates that there is something fishy about the connection between (v) and ontological distinction, something that should be pursued further. What it indicates is that (v) already has some onto­ logical content. Some potentially questionable metaphysical assumptions have been snuck in via the back door.BB There is an illicit assumption concealed in ( i ) that only becomes explicit with the i nvocation of the identity of indis­ cernibles in inferring (v) from ( iv) . It all comes down to how the notion of sameness is i nterpreted. I n order for the i nference from ( iv) to (v) to work-that is. in order for us to conclude that the object-for-us and the object-in-itself are identical from the fact that they must be the same in every respect88. It should be noted that to reject these questionable assumptions and the hasty proof of ontological distinction given above is not necessarily to reject the brute fact of ontological distinction. Another way of looking at the issue is to say that our knowledge (or its representational content) and its object are distinct by default, insofar as. pace Harman. the question of their iden­ tity simply cannot arise. To give a parallel example, Julius Caesar is distinct from the number 9 because, although we have procedures for determining whether numbers are identical, and whether people are identical , we have no procedures that cross the number/person divide. Similarly, we have ways of determining whether representational contents are identical (e.g. , whether you and I are saying the same thing in speaking the same sentence). and these are not necessarily compatible with our procedures for identifying the objects they represent. --f I m )> "' Gl c ;;:: m z --f ,, "' 0 ;;:: 0 m z --f --f -<

78 >­ ff­ z w 0 ::;; 0 Ct: LL f­ z w ::;; :::0 (.') Ct: <! w I f- the uncontroversial idea that a correct representation must somehow represent the object as being the same as it actually is, must be converted into the much more controversial idea that a correct representation must somehow be the same as the object is. This means that correctly representing some fea­ ture of an object is interpreted as standing in some relation to another object that also possesses that feature. Knowing that the tree-in- itself is an elm involves standing in some curious relation to a tree-for-me that is an elm in precisely the same sense as the tree-in-itself. For the principle of the identity of indiscernibles to work. the object-for-us and the object-in-itself must not only be able to have the same features. they must also possess these features in the same sense. What this shows is that the argument from identity can contribute to the proof of withdrawal only if Harman is allowed to base his epistemology upon a metaphysical distinction (object-for-us/object-in-itself) closely resembling the distinction between the sensual object and the real object it is i ntended to demonstrate. The fact of a distinction between types of object is already given, even if its character is not.89 To call this epistemology idiosyncratic would be an u nderstatement. 89. This is an interesting contrast to the way the distinction between types of object emerges in Tool-Being, which sees it as a consequence of his re­ construction of the tool-analysis. rather than something already implicit in the analysis (258-9 ) . However, the argument of this particular section is suspect (essence must itself have essence. ad infinitum) and does not seem to be repeated in any of the subsequent work. We will discuss this further in chapter 3.4, subsection V.

2 . H E I D EGG ER, H USSERL, AN D KRI PKE 19 Moving on to the second aspect of Harman's system. the I m 0 m Gl Gl m ,, fourfold obviously emerges from the combination of the real/ sensual distinction provided by the arguments for withdrawal with the object/quality distinction. There are a number of dif­ ferent ways in which Harman i ntroduces the latter distinction and thereby facilitates this emergence. However. the fourfold lacks any obvious counterpart to withdrawa l 's tool-analysis: there is no single argument which stands out above all oth ­ ers. Rather. there is a m i x o f t h e three forms o f exposition. which. although it can be broken down into two core argu­ ments-the argument from eidos (taken from Husserl) and the argument from essence (taken from Leibniz, Zubiri, and Kripke) -is principally organised by Harman's interpretation of Heidegger's famous fourfold (das Geviert) of earth ( Erde) , sky (Himmel ) , gods (Gottlichen) and mortals (Sterblingen) . As such , we must once more preface our examination of Harman's own arguments with a brief analysis of his reading of Heidegger. I . H A R M A N ' S H E I D EG G E R R EV I S I T E D Harman's reading of the fourfold i s to be praised for refusing either to sideline it as an unimportant feature of Heidegger's work, or to deny the numerical specificity of the categories constituting it. Moreover. it is to be commended for interpret­ ing these categories as the result of the intersection of two distinctions that it basically gets right: cleared/concealed. and multiple/unitary. It is in the i nterpretation of these distinc­ tions that everything goes wrong . The most serious prob­ lem is that Harman conflates the more well-known fourfold I c (/) (/) m ,, r )> z 0 :>< ,, -0 :>< m

so discussed above with another fourfold schema found earlier in Heidegger's works-na mely, in his lect u re cou rse d u r­ 0 w ing the Freiburg Emergency War Semester of 1919. This is (/) the intersection of a distinction between the pre-theoretical '::: > w a:: a:: w (!J (!J w 0 w I � z <( � a:: <( I (vortheoretische) and the theoretical ( theoretische) and a distinction between the generic and the specific, producing these four categories: the preworldly something ( vorweltliche Etwas) , the world-laden something ( welthaftes ftwas) , the formal-logical objective something ( formallogisches gegen­ standliches ftwas) , and the object-type something (objektar­ tiges ftwas) .90 This is complicated by the fact that Harman also misreads the 1919 schema, reading its concern with the 'something' as a matter of singularity as opposed to universal­ ity, of beings as opposed to Being. It is understandable that Harman takes the pre-theoretical/ theoretical distinction to correspond to his own real/sensual distinction, but. as we have already seen, this is a misreading of Heidegger's concern with the difference between the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand. The latter is not a distinction between that which is understood (the sensual ) and that which exceeds understanding (the rea l ) , but a distinction between theoretical (apophantic) and pre-theoretical ( herme­ neutic) modes of u nderstanding. The more serious error is that he confuses the distinction between beings considered generi­ cally ( beings qua beings) and beings considered specifically (e.g . , this pen, that piece of paper, etc.) with the distinction betwee n the unitary bearer of qualities (e.g . , this pen , qua this) and the multiplicity of its qualities (e.g . , this pen qua pen, qua plastic, qua blue, etc . ) . Although in considering something as 90. T. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger"s Being ond Time (Oakland, CA: Uni­ versity of California Press, 1992), 21-5.

a generic something we are indeed abstracting away from its 81 specific determinations. we are not thereby moving from mul­ tiplicity to unity: the object-type something is already unitary; it is simply a unit of a specific type (e.g . , a pen) with many other specific features (e.g . , it is made of plastic, it is blue, etc.). The point is not to investigate the singularity of each being as distinct from the plurality of its qualities, but to investigate the universality of its Being as distinct from the particularity of its type and its other features. In essence, the 1919 schema is an early articulation of the connection between projective u nderstanding and the question of Being: it circumscribes the relationship between the general structure of our theoretical u nderstanding of beings (formal-logical objective something) and the primordial source of our understanding ( pre-worldly something ) . This is just what Heidegger will later characterise as the relationship between Being and time.91 The later fourfold most famously appears in an essay enti­ tled 'The Thing' ( 1950 ), in Heidegger's analysis of the conditions under which a humble jug appears to us. But hints of the themes that compose it appear at least as early as his masterful 'On the Origin of the Work of Art' (1935) and run rampant across the jumble of musings that compose Contributions to Philosophy (1936-8 ) . Harman overlooks these fo r the most part, in favour of his attempt to read a continuity with the 1919 schema. It is ironic, then, that his interpretation of the twin distinctions that constitute the fourfold gains more traction u pon these works. 91. Of course. Heidegger never provided a complete account of his analysis of Being in terms of time. The third division of part one of Being and Time which was supposed to contain this analysis was never published, although we have fragments of the ideas that would have made it up in the form of Basic Problems at Phenomenology, which provides the most extensive version of the analysis, along with the best account the projection of Being upon the primordial source of temporal understanding ( Temporalitiit) . I l> ;;o ;:: l> z (/) I m 0 m Gl Gl m ;;o ;;o m < (/) --t m 0

82 This is because what they present is essentially a modification and extension of the account of the strife between earth and 0 U.J >­ Cl) > U.J Q'. Q'. U.J (!) (!) U.J 0 U.J I Cl) z <( ::;;: Q'. <( I world briefly discussed earlier. The important differences are that: (a) world qua projected space of possibility is renamed sky; ( b) Dasein's role in the projection of this space is made explicit in the form of mortals; and (c) the enigmatic gods are added as a counterpart to mortals. This leaves us with a split between a unitary horizon of appearance (sky) , multiple agents who clear this horizon (mortals) . a unitary locus of resistance to this clearing (earth) . and multiple foci where this resistance is hinted at within the horizon itself (gods) . The mirror play between these four is then nothing but an extended account of strife: the process through which we attempt to negotiate a coherent and comprehensive grasp of reality by wrestling with that reality itself. Harman u nderplays Heidegger's version of the cleared/ concealed and multiple/unitary axes in order to draw a conti­ nuity with his own fourfold.92 The crucial difference between them is that Heidegger interprets the multiple/unitary axis as a distinction between beings as such (the plurality of beings) and beings as a whole (the totality of beings) . whereas Harman i nterprets it as the distinction between the multiplicity of a being's qualities and its sing u larity as bearer of these qualities. This reflects their differing interpretation of the other axis, inso­ far as the later Heidegger understands concealing principally in terms of the whole (earth). of which particular concealings (gods) are derivative, whereas Harman takes particular con­ cealings to be, not only the primary, but the only real form of 92. I say ' underplays' here because there are points at which he seems to recognise that Heidegger's later schema simply does not fit his own. This is somewhat implicit in Toof-Being (266) . but it is explicit by the time of The Quadruple Object (87-8).

concealing (withd rawa l ) . Harman does not so much think that 83 the whole conceals itself, as that it doesn't exist. It is nothing but the mutual withdrawal of every being from every other.93 This raises the issue of the relation between the multiple/unitary distinction and the part/whole distinction. Harman's rejection of the whole turns on interpreting it not merely as the total­ ity of beings, but as a single being composed out of all other beings. As we have seen. this is precisely how he i nterprets Heidegger's account of totality. This makes Heidegger's posi­ tion into a variant of what he would call onto-theology, insofar as it comprehends Being in terms of a single privileged being. This misinterpretation reveals a deeper issue though, insofar as Harman seems to blend these two distinctions in explaining his own schema. Specifically, the multiplicity of a thing's real quali­ ties and its unity as bearer of these qualities is often exchanged for the distinction between the thing's real parts and its unity as the whole these parts compose. 94 This conflation sometimes comes out into the open. only to disappear once more.95 We must be careful not to let it pass without notice. 93. Tool-Being, 29'1-6. 9'1 . This is most explicit in the section of Tool-Being where he explains the distinction between real objects and real qualities by way of Zubiri's account of essence: 'The object lives with a dual tension in its breast. On the one hand it fluctuates between the vacuum of its tool-being and the power of its impact on neighbouring beings. On the other hand it is itself a systematic empire swarming with interior ports'. (266, my emphasis) . 95. The sheer extent of this is dramatised across Guerrilla Metaphysics, in which the distinction between parts and qualities finally becomes evident, as if suddenly discovered. only to metamorphose through a number of different forms (cf. §7B, §10, §11) before finally settling upon a rejection of the plurality of qualities in favour of the plurality of parts (228-9). A detailed commentary upon these convoluted transitions is beyond the scope of this book (although see chapter 3.2, subsection I I ) ; but the need for one is ameliorated by the subsequent fading of this bold position in the formulation of the object/quality distinction presented in The Quadruple Object (cf. 88) . I )> ;u ;;:: )> z [/) I m 0 m Gl Gl m ;u ;u m < [/) ::; m 0

84 Cf) 0 Cl w ::;; 0 CY LL >-­ z w ::;; :::> (!J CY <( w I >-- l l . T H E ARG U M E N T FROM E I DOS It is clear that any argument Harman presents for his fou rfold schema and the categorical structures he derives from it will i nevitably depend u pon the arg uments for withdrawal we have already presented. Beyond this. Harman does not really need to argue for the distinction between objects and qualities, at least i nsofar as it is a correlate of the intuitive distinction between subjects and predicates. Rather, what must be argued for is his interpretation of the way this dis­ ' tinction intersects with the distinction between the real and the sensual, to create a divide between two kinds of quality. The first such argument we will consider, from The Quadru­ ple Object, attempts to reverse-engineer this distinction by i ndependently deriving one of the categories that emerges out of it. It aims to demonstrate the divide between kinds of quality from within experience itself by appropriating H us­ serl 's phenomenological analysis of eidos. Harman is fond of remarking that despite the avowedly idealist character of H us­ serlian phenomenology, it nevertheless has a distinctly realist flavour.96 He finds this flavour concentrated in the analysis of eidos, where he attempts to separate it out from the bitter overtones of H usserl 's idealism. Harman begins by introducing Husserl 's theory of adum­ b rati o n (Abschattung) .97 The basic idea u nderlying this phenomenological concept is that i n ordinary perception we encounter things from different perspectives, and that the way the thing is presented may vary between them, highlight­ ing some features and concealing others, despite the object remaining the same. We can stand outside a house and view 96. E.g. The Quadruple Object. 20. 97. Ibid . . §18.

it from various angles. and even walk within it. touching its 85 walls and smelling its scents. but we a re always encoun tering t h e same house. even if t h e encounters themselves are distinct. From this, Harman d raws the phenomenologi­ cal insight that the object is distinct from the qualities that it presents in these adumbrations, not because it is more than them. but because there is some sense in which it is less than them. This is because it is possible to subtract them from the object without its ceasing to be the same object. However, there is a limit u pon subtraction. because if we could subtract al/ of a sensual object's qualities there would be nothing to distinguish it from other such objects.98 There are some essential features without which the sensual object cannot be what it is. and it is possible to compare different adumbrations of the same object and strip away the inessential features they present. in order to leave these behind. Husserl calls this process eidetic variation. and its result, eidos. Harman then claims that. according to H usserl, eidetic qualities are never revealed in perceptual adumbrations in the way that accidental ones are. but only through the process of eidetic variation, or the categorial intuition that arises from it. Harman then criticises H usserl, and amends his account i n t h e following way: H usserl is wrong to distinguish between the sensual and the i ntellectual here; both sensual and categorial intuition a re forms of intuition, and to intuit something is not the same as to be it. Hence the eidetic features of any object can never be made present even through the intellect. but can only be 98. Ibid., §1C. � I m )> ::0 G) c <:: m z � ,, ::0 0 <:: m 0 0 (/)

approached indirectly by way of allusion, whether in the arts or in the sciences. 99 86 UJ 0 0 w ::;; 0 "' LL f­ z w ::;; :::0 (') "' <! w I f- The argument from identity thus makes a reappearance here to invoke the split between the real and the sensual. But what is more important is the way this is configured in relation to the analysis of eidetic variation. Harman draws a distinction between sensual and intellectual modes of engagement with a thing's eidetic features, only to collapse it by insisting that these features must lie beyond both. He thus converts the distinction between accidental and eidetic features i nto his distinction between sensual and real qualities: ' For the quali­ ties of its eidos are also withdrawn from all access, and "real" is the only possible name for such a feature.'100 Here we once again encounter the strange interface between metaphysics and phenomenology in Harman's work. J ust what is eidetic variation if the features it was supposed to reveal can never actually be revealed ? The truth of the matter is that Harman had parted ways with Husserl long before this move was made. H usserl's con­ cept of eidos is an account of general essence, as opposed to the account of individual essence that Harman is attempting to develop. H usserl principally talks about eidetic hierarchies of genus and species (e.g . , the eidetic features of trees as opposed to those of elms) which eidetic variation and its corre­ sponding modes of intuition allow us to traverse on the basis of our intuitions of individuals.101 He insists that all eidetic features 99. Ibid . , 28. my emphasis. 100. Ibid. 101 . E . H usserl, Ideas Pertaining ta a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phe­ nomenological Philosophy, I, tr. F. Kersten ( Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1982), 8-15.

'belonging to the essence of the individuum another individuum a1 can have too',102 in contrast to the idea that eidos could be unique to a given sensual object. However, this claim is not just in conflict with Harman's take on essence. but also with his take on the qualities that compose it: 'qualities as described in this book are always i ndividualised by the object to which they belong.'103 Harman not only thinks that the process of eidetic variation aims at what makes a sensual object the unique indi­ vidual that it is; he thinks that it does so by considering qualities that are unique to it qua individual. This dearth of generality means that there is no basis for the process of comparison. insofar as there are no qualities that could possibly be shared .104 This makes the basis of the process of subtraction entirely mysterious. as there a re no criteria for sorting accidents from eidos.105 In essence. what Harman does here is capitalise u pon this mystery, i n a manner similar to that we have seen i n 102. Ibid . . 8. 103. The Quadruple Object. 30. 104 . We have already seen this dearth of generality in Harman's interpretation of Heidegger's phenomenology (cf. Tool-Being. 84-5), but it is equally present in his reading of Husserl's. For instance. the example of the phenomenological reduction he presents in Guerrilla Metaphysics (§108) never moves beyond the level of the individual, but simply decomposes sensual wholes into sensual parts and explores the relations between them. We will discuss this further in chapter 3.2, subsection I I . 105. Going further than this, in ' O n Vicarious Causation' (in R. Mackay (ed . ] , Collapse vol . 2 ( Falmouth: U rbanomic, 2007], 171-205), Harman claims that Husserl 's method is superficial, because it cannot analyse eidetic qualities without turning them into 'something like accidents' (214 ) . He even goes so far as to claim that, not only are qualities individualised, but there is really only one quality-the singular eidos. He thus sees eidetic variation as a sort of frantic scrabbling to unwrap a present in which we never reach the gift itself, only ever more layers of wrapping paper. _, I m :» ;a Gl c ;:: m z _, ,, ;a 0 ;:: m 0 0 (fJ

88 w 0 z w (/) (/) w ::;; 0 0:: LL f­ z w ::;; :::0 C9 0:: <( w I f- the arguments from execution and excess. He converts the absence of criteria for differentiating between essential and inessential qualities in any given case into an absolute differ­ ence between essential and i nessential qualities in all cases. That there are no conceivable features that could be the end point of the process of determining eidos so described is used as a reason to treat eidetic features as inconceivable. U ltimately, the paucity of Harman's account of eidetic variation is actually best indicated by the way he appeals to allusion to fill it in. Not only does this bear no resemblance to the H usserlian phe­ nomenological method on which the argument is supposedly founded , but it raises difficult questions about the categorical schema derived from the fou rfold , insofar as it seemingly conftates allure (space-fusion) with theory (time-fission) . I l l . T H E A RG U M E N T F R O M ESS E N C E The second argument for the distinction between sensual qualities and real qualities is less localised . It must be recon­ structed out of two components that are l i berally spread throughout Harman's work, one associated with Kripke's work on rigid designators,106 and one associated with Leibniz and Zubiri's work on i ndividuation and essence.107 When taken together, these components allow for a reverse-engineering of the distinction similar to that of the argument from eidos. by deriving the corresponding category of essence. Also like the argument from eidos, it depends upon the distinction between sensual and real established by the arguments for withdrawa l . 106. Cf. Tool-Being, 124, 213-15; Guerrilla Metaphysics, 28-9, 108-10, 197-8; Prince of Networks, 175; The Quadruple Object, 67. 107. Cf. Tool-Being, §§23-24 ; Guerrilla Metaphysics, 82-3, 147, 162, 192; The Quadruple Object. 48-9.

This is because it needs to conceive the relation between 89 the sensual object and the real object in terms of reference. This does not mean that it must be described in terms of Heideggerian functional relations between things and things ( Verweis) , but rather that it must be described in terms ame­ nable to the debates regarding how words relate to things i naugurated by Frege's theory of sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung) . This is facilitated by the fact that the H usserlian terms in which Harman couches his theory of sensual objects were developed in dialogue with Frege. It is this concern with the intentional basis of reference that connects his work with the issues that Kripke raises for the theory of names.108 Harman draws on H usserl's concept of nominal acts to explain the relationship between the sensual object and its real counterpart.109 He interprets H usserl's claim that all other intentional acts are founded upon nominal acts as saying that in any intentional relation we are acquainted with an immediate 'this' (sensual object) that in turn refers to a shadowy 'this' ( real object) . Names are attached to the former as if they are the senses that determine their references. This means that distinct sensual objects can refer to the some real object insofar as one thing can have many names. The crucial point is that, although Harman thinks that we can become acquainted with a sensual object by means of a description of the object that would draw our attention to it, and thus that we can learn how to use names through using descriptions (e.g . , ' " Pete" refers to the person who wrote the book you are currently reading ' ) , he does not think that this is necessary for acquaintance. As he explains in his reading of Ortega y Gasset . our acquaintance 108. S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell , 1981 ) . 109. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 28-9. _, I m l> ;u G) c ;;: m z _, ,, ;u 0 ;;: m (/) (/) m z 0 m

go w u z w [/] [/] w :::; 0 "' LL f­ z w :::; :::i (') "' <( w I f- with the sensual object is a sort of feeling, and the object a sort of feeling-thing, which any particular description can never completely capture.110 However, this inability of descriptions to capture the feel of sensual objects is not yet the inability to capture the meaning of names that Kripke reveals. Harman takes the latter inability to consist in the relation between the name and its reference rather than the name and its sense: ' For Kripke, names are "rigid designators" that point to (or stipulate) realities beyond all possible descriptions of them .'111 Whereas the immediate 'this' is something more than the particular descriptions that give us purchase upon it, the shadowy 'this' is something other than every possible description. It's helpful to quote Harman at some length on this point: ° Kripke's ' rigid designator' is meant to serve as a proper name pointing to something that remains identical even when all known features of the thing a re altered, so that the moon remains the moon even if we turn out at some future point to have been catastrophically wrong about all its properties [ ... ] However, the question for us is whether the inviolate 'th is' beneath all apparent properties is something lying within percep­ tion, or is instead a real object lying somewhere beneath it. 112 Obviously, Harman answers this question in the affirmative; but it is i mportant to see that he does so for epistemo­ logical reasons. He thinks that because we can use names to talk a bout the same thing rega rd less of any possible 110. Guerrilla Metaphysics. 108-10. 111. The Quadruple Object. 67. 112. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 197-8.

disagreements about how we should describe it. every name 91 must therefore refer to a mysterious ' inaccessible "X" lying behind any descriptions that might be given of it'. 113 What this means is that. because Kripke shows that the reference of names is somehow i ndependent of our beliefs about their qualities. the individuation of the objects they refer to can­ not have anything to do with these beliefs. This is the first component of the argument. The second component is much simpler. It amounts to a rather straightforward claim about the nature of individuation, which enables us to draw consequences regarding how the ind ividuation of real objects does work from the above claim about how it doesn't. Harman discusses this i n relation to Zubiri 's work, but his simplest statements of it are invariably his remarks on Leibniz: [ Leibniz] observes that even though each monad must be one monad, each also needs a multitude of qualities to be what it is, to differ from other monads rather than being interchangeable with them. 114 For real objects to be distinct from one another, . they must possess some qualities that distinguish them. There can be no individuation without qualities. This claim interacts with the Kripkean component in the fol lowing way: The basic point is that we can no longer simply distinguish between a sensual world of properties and a deeper hidden core of the essential 'this.' ( ... ] The 'this' may be separable from all 113. Tool-Being, 213. 114. The Quadruple Object, 49. --< I m )> ;o G) c ;::: m z --< ,, ;o 0 ;::: m (fJ (fJ m z 0 m

sorts of specific and falsifiable features, but it is never separable 92 w u z w U) U) w 2 0 Ct'. LL 1z w 2 :::i (') Ct'. <! w I I- from a specific essence, and is therefore no ' bare particular.' 115 Real objects must have individual essences that distinguish them from all other things, even if these cannot be adequately described in terms of any sensual qualities whatsoever. There­ fore, if sensual qualities are unable to compose these essences, there must be an entirely distinct type of quality capable of doing so. The need for essence thus demonstrates the need for a distinction between real qualities and sensual qualities. The issue with this argument is that, much as we saw with H usserl in the argument from eidos, Harman's attempt to integrate Kripke's insights into his metaphysical framework ends up seriously warping them. We could focus on the fact that Kripke would not endorse the account of indirect refer ence that Harman's division between sensual and real objects implies, but this is a tortuous point. given the i ntricacies of neo­ Fregean attempts to account for names as rigid designators.116 A more salient point is that although Kripke also develops a conception of individual essence out of his account of rigid designation, it is remarkably different from Harman's. Kripke does not take his account of rigid designation to imply that the essential properties of things must be of a completely different kind to their inessential ones.117 For him, it is entirely possible for one thing to possess a property essentially (e. g . , a living cell 's 115. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 197-8. 116. I have in mind the work of Gareth Evans, John McDowell and Robert Brandom. I personally endorse Brandom's own anaphoric approach to inte­ grating the Fregean sense/reference distinction and rigid designation. which he calls 'tactile Fregeanism' (R. Brandom , Making It Explicit [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994 ] . chapters 7-8). 117. Cf. Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 39-53, 1 10-15.

sali nity, which must remain within a narrow range in order for 93 it to function) and for another to possess the same property accidentally (e.g . , a cooked piece of pasta's salinity, which can vary well outside of this range without dissolution) . Of course, he might simply have failed to recognise the implications of his own theory, but it should give us pause for thought. As such , we should take a look at his argument against descriptivism. Kripke claims that the meaning of a name such as 'Aristotle' cannot be composed out of descriptions such as 'the most famous student of Plato', 'the tutor of Alexander the great', or 'a G reek philosopher with an impressive beard', even if these descriptions uniquely pick out the relevant object, either indi­ vidually or in conjunction. Put i n its simplest form, the argument for this claim is that we would otherwise be u nable to make sense of statements such as 'Aristotle might not have been the greatest student of Plato', 'Aristotle could have died before Alexander was born', or ' I t was possible for Aristotle to shave off his beard and abandon philosophy'. For any descriptive feature that is supposed to belong to the meaning of a name, we can construct a seemingly reasonable counterfactual statement i nvolving that name in which the object lacks it, thereby producing a contradiction. The important contrast to draw with Harman's presentation of the argument is that this is straightforwardly modal rather than epistemic: it involves differences between the way the world actually is and ways it could have been, rather than differences between the way the world really is and ways we take it to be. What Kripke means when he says that names are rigid designators is simply that they pick out the same thing i n all counterfactual scenarios. Moreover, he does not think that the name successfully refers to an object in every proposed scenario. He holds that some counterfactual statements (e.g . , 'Aristotle could have been .... I m )> ;u Gl c ;;:: m z .... " ;u 0 ;;:: m (/) (/) m z (') m

94 w 0 z w U) U) w ::; 0 a:: LL f­ z w ::; ::> (') a:: <{ w I f- a pig ' ) are false precisely because there are some essential features (e.g . , humanity) that could not be absent from a scenario without the object being absent. He thus does not think that grasping the essence of a thing is impossible, but simply that it is distinct from grasping the meaning of a name that refers to it. There may be independent reasons not to endorse Kripke's essentialism, but they are not necessarily reasons to endorse Harman's alternative. Harman's account of rigid designation has thus mutated i nto stubborn designation, i nsofar as names not only refer to the same thing throughout counterfactual variations, but across all possible appearances. For Kripke and those who attempt to incorporate his insights, there is still at least some role for descriptions of the features and history of the objects our names refer to, in determining whether two different names refer to the same thing: There can be entirely separate causal histories (or anaphoric chains) determining the reference of different names (e.g . , ' morning star' and 'evening star') and yet facts about these can help determine whether they h ave been referring to the same thing all along (e. g . , 'the morning star is the evening star', since both are names for Venus) . For Harman. we can at best use descriptions to determine whether the sensual objects our names are attached to are the same, but never whether distinct sensual objects might refer to the same real object. This makes the boundaries between real objects as mysterious as their qualities.118 The sensual chair I am sitting on and the sensual tree I am staring at are sensually distinct, but they might not be really distinct. The sun, the sea, and the strudel I had for breakfast may really have been the same thing all along. The messy business of working out just 118. I owe this point to Daniel Sacilotto.

what it is we're talking about can only be given over to allure 95 in the same fashion that the theorisation of eidos seems to have been . It therefore seems as if the whole issue of reference from which the argument began has gone out of the window. Even more worryingly perhaps, we are left wondering why we must affirm the reality of discreteness at all, rather than some singular Apeiron u nderlying a plurality of discrete appearances. Harman's own analysis of appearance cannot but dissolve the 'glaringly obvious fact' of discreteness that he himself held up against Heidegger's purported holism . His radical dissociation of the i ndividuation of sensual objects from the individuation of real objects precludes any appeal to apparent discreteness in order to prove real discreteness, and thereby u ndermines his seemingly radical individualism. If we cannot know anything about the criteria of individuation of real objects, then we are left with the real possibility that there might only be one. -4 I m )> JJ Gl c ,;: m z -4 -n JJ 0 ,;: m Cf! Cf! m z 0 m

3. OCCAS I O NALI S M , I N D E P E N D E N C E , A N D SU P P L E M E N TAT I O N I n considering the a rg u ments for the fi nal aspect of Har­ man's system, namely vicarious causation, we are again put i n a difficult position. Though Harman devotes a consider­ able amount of space to elaborating his account of allure,119 and presents some additional reasons why we should want such an account of causation , the principal motivation for the account is provided by the arguments we have already 0 0 0 > en 0 z > r iii :;:: z 0 m -u m z 0 m z 0 m Once it was conceded that the world is made up of withdrawn > z 0 en c -u -u r m :;:: m z --< objects, utterly sealed in private vacuums but also unleashing 0 considered and rejected . Harman issues the following chal­ lenge to those who would assess his account of causation in Guerrilla Metaphysics: forces upon one another, all the other problems follow in quick succession. Let anyone who does not agree with the strategies of guerrilla metaphysics specify clearly which of its initial steps is invalid. 120 This is precisely what I have done. None of these i nitial steps has proved valid, let alone all of them. This seems to rule out vicarious causation by default. Still, there are some more probative reasons that Harman presents for his account of causation. He provides a further historical narrative regarding the tradition of occasionalist accounts of causation, which is meant to suggest that the problem his theory responds 119. 97 Cf. Guerrilla Metaphysics §§8-12: 'On Vicarious Causation'. 120. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 97. � z

98 to emerges from a broader range of concerns than his own. z 0 demands supplementation by a metaphysical theory of cau­ '= 0 <( Cl'. f­ f­ Cl) sation of precisely the kind he provides. I will now address both He also suggests that the scientific account of causation _J <( z 0 Cl) <( (.) (.) 0 Cl) z <( ::> Cl'. <( I of these claims. but in between them I will try to reconstruct the core of Harman's argument for vicarity on the basis of the independence of objects from one another. This will provide a proper contrast with the motivations of the occasionalists, as well as contextualize the demand for supplementation. I . H A R M A N ' S O C C AS I O N A L I ST T R A D I T I O N Accordi ng to Harman, the problem of how distinct things can causally interact has a long lineage.121 On the one hand , he sees it being raised in explicitly metaphysical terms in the Islamic occasionalism of the Ash'arite school , the modern occasional­ ism of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, and in the more contemporary occasionalism of Whitehead. All of these think­ ers invoke God as a mediator capable of overcoming what they see as the causal gap between entities, whether as the source of all causal power (the Ash'arites), the source of the connection between different kinds of substance ( Descartes). or the medium through which entities are able to encounter one another ( M alebranche. Leibniz, and Whitehead ) . On the other, he sees it being raised implicitly in the epistemological scepticism/critique of Hume and Kant. He reads these think­ ers as invoking the mind as a mediator which provides the causal connections between appearances, whether through mere habit ( H u me) or t h rough transcendental necessity ( Kant ) . Harman criticises both of these trends for advocat­ ing a 'global occasionalism', insofar as they require all causal 121. Cf. 'On Vicarious Causation', 188, 20'..! , 218-19; Prince of Networks, §5C.

relations to be mediated by the same thing-God in the for- 99 mer. the mind in the latter-and proposes. along with Latour. a ' local occasionalism' in which causal relations between enti­ ties are mediated by further entities. Now. although this strikes me as presenting a somewhat perverse reading of Kant and Hume. insofar as it reads their epistemological concerns in metaphysical terms they would abjure. there are definite continuities here. There are overlap­ ping themes that seem to motivate a similar account of causa­ tion, insofar as they all demand some form of causal mediation. However, this demand does not arise from a single problem held in common by the various sub-traditions that make u p t h i s narrative. For i nstance. not o n l y did Islamic occasionalism provide a theological solution. it was motivated by a theological problem about the power of God . This is remarkably differ­ ent from Descartes's problem concerning the split between thought and extension. Leibniz's problem concerning compos­ sibility, and is light years from the concerns with the nature of explanation that motivate Latour's occasionalism. If we do not share any of these diverse concerns, then this problem has no hold on us. Harman hardly takes the theological concerns of the Ash'arites to be pressing, so he cannot lean u pon them to motivate his own theory of causation. In short, we stil l need some good reasons, above and beyond this narrative. to accept the problematic status of u nmediated causal relations. I I . TH E ARG U M E N T FROM I N D E P E N D E N C E Harman's own reasons for taking u nmediated causal rela­ tions to be impossible all stem from his claims about the independence of objects from their relations to one another. These turn u p at various different points in the three argu­ ments for withdrawal we have considered, but they a re __, I m )> ;;o Gl c � m z __, " ;;o 0 � z 0 m -0 m z 0 m z () m

100 w u z w 0 z w D.. w 0 z ::;; 0 Cl'. LL r­ z w ::;; ::> (') Cl'. <I'. w I r- never motivated independently of claims about the excess of objects over our grasp of them, whether they are explicitly connected or implicitly conflated . This should be unsurprising given the dominance of phenomenological themes through­ out these arguments, even when they are illicitly i ntertwined with metaphysical ones. My aim now is to make this tangle of claims about epistemic access and causal interaction a bit clearer, not by reconstructing a further argument. but by u neart h i ng a non sequitur u nderlying the other a rg u ­ ments. This amounts t o a final attempt a t cutting t h e Gordian knot of methodological issues underlying Harman's project. prior to considering his ideas about the relationship between philosophy and science. I think the key here is Harman's offhand remark that 'despite its various degrees of efficacy, [ physical causation] must ultimately either work or fail to work'.122 This remark is made in the context of an exposition of the parallels between causation and allure, which he similarly takes to either succeed or fail in this binary fashion. This adds an extra layer of depth to the picture of vicarious causation presented above: not only is sincerity insufficient for causal interaction. allure is sometimes insufficient too. Successful causation requires successful allure. But what is really interesting is the claim that causal interac­ tion should be understood in terms of success at all. If the problem of how one object can affect another is actually the problem of how one object can successfully affect another, then this tells us something more about the implicit motivations of the problem. Knowledge can be u nderstood in terms of representational success. If one conflates representation and causation by treating causation in intentional terms. then one 122. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 176.

can seemingly infer the impossibility of successful causation 101 (causal independence) from the impossibility of knowledge (epistemic excess) . This conflation can only be held together by the sort of functional language that Harman refuses to abandon at the end of the argument from execution, as it lets us treat things as striving for ends. We can say that things try to affect one another, even if they always fail. Of course, there still must be some way in which causation can succeed . The absolute ban u pon causal contact is thus qualified using the notion of directness: all direct access fails, therefore all direct causation fails. The hope of an indirect form of access ( if no longer strictly epistemic in character) thus holds open the hope of an indirect form of causation. This hope is answered in both cases by allure. The latter provides a supposedly non-representational way for us to access the real , and i n doing so provides a way for the real to affect us. However, the fact that these relations proceed in opposite directions should give us pause for thought. The object that tries to affect is the object hiding behind the sensual object. whereas the object that tries to access is the object encounter ing this facade. What is going on here? The crucial question may be put as follows: I n precisely what way can allure be said to succeed where representation fails? It is the equivocation between the standards of represen ­ tational success and causal success that allows us to convert epistemic excess into causal i ndependence. If there is no sense in which allure is held to the former standard. or to some deeper standard that it shares with representation. then there is no good sense in which it can overcome causal independence. The problem is that the only concrete standards of success that Harman ever deploys in his discussions of allure concern --< I m l> ;o Gl c ;;:: m z --< .,, ;o 0 ;;:: z 0 m -u m z 0 m z 0 m

102 how the allure affects the one who experiences it.123 Does the joke make me laugh ? Does my mistake embarrass me? Does 5 the metaphor make me think? The fact that these are the ;:: questions that determine the success of allure indicates why >== z � � � Cl) � successful allure is a model for successful causation. These allusions can only succeed or fail insofar as there is some effect they are supposed to produce upon us. They are thus more like access to narcotics than access to information. It doesn't ff: seem to matter that there is no substantive comparison with � representational success, only because allure is already u nder- � stood in causal terms. The non sequitur is hidden by blatant f- ::; ;;: circularity. Harman's aesthetics is an introspective theory of f- emotional affection. � I l l . T H E ARG U M E N T FROM S U P P LE M E NTAT I O N Finally, w e come t o Harman's defence o f the importance of his theory of vicarious causation by way of his thoughts on the relationship between philosophy and science. Let's jump straight in at the deep end: For several centuries, philosophy has been on the defensive against the natural sciences, and now occupies a point of lower social prestige and, surprisingly, narrower subject matter. A brief glance at history shows that this was not always the case. To resume the offensive, we need only reverse the long-standing trends of renouncing all speculation on objects and volunteering for curfew in an ever-tinier ghetto of solely human realities: language, texts. political power. Vicarious causation frees us from such imprisonment by returning us to the heart of the inanimate world , whether natural or artificial. The uniqueness of philosophy 123. Cf. Guerrilla Metaphysics. §§8-9. 211-13.

is secured , not by walling off a zone of precious human reality that science cannot touch , but by dealing with the same world as the various sciences but in a different manner. 124 Harman thus sees his metaphysical system as an attempt to return philosophy to its rightful subject matter. He defends philosophy's right to tackle the same topics as the sciences by claiming that it can approach them through other means. Given the difficu lties we have encountered i n determining H a rman's methodology thus far. we are entitled to some curiosity regarding just what these means are, and how they are supposed to differ from those of the sciences. This is where the theory of vicarious causation is supposed to shine, by providing us with an exemplar of the divergence between the scientific and philosophical approaches: From the naturalistic standpoint. ignoring for now whatever complications one might wish to infer from the quantum theory, causation is essentially a physical problem of two material masses slamming i nto each other or mutually affected through fields. One object becomes directly present to the other, whether through physical contact or some other form of intimacy. But there is also a metaphysical problem of causation . 125 . The initial problem with this is that all of the contrasts Harman makes between the supposed scientific u nderstanding of causality and his own metaphysical one present an incredibly crude version of the sciences.126 Although he pays lip service 124. 'On Vicarious Causation', 190. 125. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 18. 126. Cf. Tool-Being. 19, 209; Guerrilla Metaphysics. 79. 103 --< I m )> ::0 Gl c ;;:: m z --< "T1 ::0 0 ;;:: (/) c -0 -0 r m ;;:: m z --< )> --< 0 z

10� to the implications of quantum mechanics, he entirely ignores the advanced mathematical techniques (e.g . , phase space z 0 t­ <! t­ z w ::;; w __) Q_ Q_ :::J Cl) ::;; 0 O'. LL t­ z w ::;; :::J (') O'. <! w I t- modelling, statistical analysis, information theory, etc.) that the sciences have developed to model phenomena since H ume talked about billiard -ball dynamics, along with the intricate theoretical questions regarding the nature of causation that these have spawned , both in the sciences and the philoso­ phy of science (e.g .. emergent capacities, statistical causal­ ity, i nformation transmission, etc.) .127 H owever, on second thought. the real problem is that Harman's approach precludes him from paying any attention to these things anyway. As far as he is concerned , the sciences don't tell us anything about reality. They only talk about it as it seems. whereas philosophy can talk about it as it is. This isn't to say science is useless, but simply that the truth is entirely inaccessible to it. Maybe this truth will be relevant to the sciences. maybe it won't. but there's no real debate to be had here. even if there might be mutual i nspiration. There is a tremendous irony in this: the strange methodo­ logical hybrid of phenomenological description and metaphysi­ cal argument that Harman adopts amounts to the practice of introspective metaphysics. It is important to understand that this is different from what is often called 'armchair metaphysics' insofar as it has nothing to do with the a priori as traditionally understood . It is not a matter of retreati ng from observation to contemplate and reason about the fundamental concepts that underpin observation, but a matter of seeking out a special kind of intuition unknown to the sciences. Harman claims to get 127. This is evident in the way he approaches the work of Ladyman and Ross in 'I am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed', 772-90, where he all but explicitly refuses to consider the scientific issues that motivate many of their crucial metaphysical choices.

at the reality that the sciences can never describe by closely 105 describing the structure of seeming. Far from challenging the retreat of philosophers from the world into the bastion of consciousness, he has simply extended the domain of con­ sciousness i nto the world. On this basis, he provides us with an introspective theory of causation modelled upon emotional i ntensity. This theory is independent of the sciences insofar as it is based on a form of evidence entirely alien to them, but it strikes me as equally alien to the proper practice of philosophy. The phenomenological trappings in which Harman's metaphysi­ cal introspection are clothed are at best a bad disguise, as if an unusually pensive crook were to don a rubber H usserl mask to preserve his anonymity during a hold -up. What they hide is a series of questionable assumptions and sometimes outright misunderstandings regarding important epistemological and metaphysical issues. Our next task must be to peel back this mask and bring these assumptions into the open, in order to better u nderstand why one might be tempted to endorse OOP despite the convoluted and deeply ftawed arguments presented for it. � I m :J> :u Cl/ c ;;:: m z � "Tl :u 0 ;;:: en c "U "U r m ;;:: m z � � 6 z

3 OBJ ECTION- ORIENTED PHILOSOPHY

Now that I have followed the various threads of argument 109 that run through Harman's work and uncovered some specific problems with them. it's time to consider the pattern that these threads weave as a whole. and d raw some general 0 � m (') __, conclusions about Harman's philosophical system. The surface 0 flaws we have encountered in the argumentative patchwork 6 that serves to justify OOP point back to a number of much deeper conceptual tangles responsible for their proliferation. These knots of questionable assumptions often serve to lend Harman's system a certai n stability in the face of the fickle winds of casual criticism, but a more thorough and sustained approach can u ntie them, and thereby reveal both their prob­ lematic character and the vital lessons they teach us about how not to construct our own philosophical tapestries. The crucial problem lying at the heart of OOP is its attitude toward explanation, which is confused ( if well-intentioned ) at best, and careless ( bordering on downright pernicious) at worst. This brings us back to a question that has cropped up at least twice already: What is metaphysics? And more specifically, what does it do? J ust what, if anything, does metaphysics explain? As already noted , this isn't something of which Harman has a particularly detailed account. Regardless, if we elaborate u pon the traditional idea that metaphysics is first philosophy, then we can set the stage for revealing some crucial features of Harman's philosophical practice. The principal characteristic of metaphysics practised as first philosophy is that it is the discourse within which one for­ mulates and defends one's most fundamental assumptions.128 128. This holds for many philosophers who use the term 'metaphysics' with­ out having any opinion on its description as 'first philosophy', such as David Lewis (see chapter 3.5, subsection I I ) . This is a practical feature of how meta­ physical discourse is used. rather than a theoretical issue of how it is under­ stood by those who use it. z ;u m z __, m 0 CJ I r 0 (/) 0 CJ I -<

110 >­ I 11. 0 en 0 _.J I 11. Cl LJ.J f­ z LJ.J This includes both narrow ontological assumptions a bout the kinds of entities one can appeal to i n non-metaphysical explanations, and more broadly categorial assumptions about the various features of these entities (e.g., properties, relations, essences, etc.) that can be i nvolved i n such explanations along with the relevant constraints u pon their involvement. This makes metaphysics the default site for dispute over the a:: 0 explanatory primitives out of which one can build explanatory z 0 frameworks in other domains (or, to put it another way, the f:: dumping ground for such primitives) . As a general rule, the abil­ LJ.J -, ity to explain more phenomena with fewer primitives is a prized u "' 0 feature of such frameworks. This means that a framework that treats as primitive things which another framework can treat as explanatory derivatives without having to make any additional assumptions is to be preferred by default. The less you have to assume to get the same explanatory result, the better. My principal contentions are that OOP is confused i nsofar as it acts as if it is explaining a bunch of phenomena that it is actually treating as metaphysically primitive ( it is explanatorily impotent) , and it is careless insofar as it actively undermines our ability to provide useful explanations of a number of important phenomena in the process ( it is explanatorily regressive) . The first two parts of this chapter will justify these claims by analysing Harman's take on the semantic phenomenon of reference and the metaphysical phenomenon of property possession, respectively. The secondary characteristic of metaphysics practised as first philosophy (which Heidegger names the forgetting of Being) is a lack of methodological self-consciousness regard­ ing precisely what it is doing in setting u p the explanatory resources available to other domains of discourse. It undertakes ontological commitments to the fundamental types of entities

there are without understanding what ontological commitment 111 ( i .e. , genuine existence) is; and discriminates between the other metaphysically permissible featu res that these enti­ 0 ties may possess, without having an adequate grasp of the m 0 __, � fundamental concepts in terms of which these discriminations 0 are articulated (e. g . , property, relation. essence. etc . ) . This 0 "' m z __, m 0 "U I leads to a number of characteristic errors (some of which Heidegger groups u nder the heading of onto-theology) which doom speculative metaphysics as an explanatory project . My secondary contentions are that OOP's pervasive evasion of methodological questions leaves it dependent upon an intuitive grasp of certain fundamental notions (e.g . , object, quality, rela­ tion. space/time, etc.) that results in a number of disastrous ambiguities and conflations that doom the project from the start-and that this portends similar fates for the other vari­ ants of 000 which take them up. The third and fourth parts of the chapter will justify these contentions by analysing Harman's use of the concepts of relation and object. respectively. The remainder of the chapter will attempt to provide an answer to the question of what metaphysics is. and to explain why Harman goes awry in his approach to it, by addressing the relations between logic, metaphysics. and meaning. z r 0 (/) 0 "U I -<

1. S E N S E A N D S E N SUA L I TY It is all too easy to label Harman's metaphysics as anti-rep­ resentational, given his emphasis on the impossibility of cor­ rectly representing things as they are in themselves. However, there is a more nuanced story to be told about representation that complicates matters a great deal. To tell this story it is important to make two distinctions. Firstly, we must distin­ guish between the predicative and referential dimensions of representation.129 Respectively, these are the aspect of a representation that governs how it represents a thing as being (e.g . , representing a man as a philanderer) . and the aspect that governs which thing it represents as being this way (e.g . , Bill Clinton ) . Secondly, we must distinguish between representational purport and representational success. This distinguishes the manner i n which each of these aspects attempt to represent the world (e.g . , representing Bill Clinton as a philanderer) from the extent to which this attempt is successful (e.g . , whether there is i n fact someone called ' Bill Clinton' and whether he is indeed a philanderer) . The intersec­ tion of these distinctions provides the scope of what must be explained by any theory of represe ntation: how a representa­ tion attempts to pick out an object; how it represents it as having certain properties (or standing in certain relations) ; 129. It is important to note that this distinction is neither exclusive to discursive (or linguistic) forms of representation, nor does it project the structure of such forms of representation onto representation more generally. It is simply meant to distinguish the manner in which a representation stores qualitative informa­ tion about something from the manner in which it corresponds to it. This is as applicable to a map as it is to a sentence with subject-predicate syntax. 113 (fJ m z (fJ m l> z 0 (fJ m z (fJ c l> r ...., -<

114 >­ >-­ _J <{ ::i (f) z w (f) 0 z <{ w (f) z w (f) how it can succeed or fail to pick out an object; and how it can represent its properties (and relations) correctly or incorrectly. We can now distinguish weak and strong forms of anti­ representationalism. The former refuses to appeal to any or all of these representational notions ( predication/reference, purport/success) as explanatory primitives in other domains (e.g . , metaphysics, aesthetics, or psychology) without first pro­ viding an independent explanation of them . The latter refuses to appeal to them entirely, along with the demand to provide such an independent explanation, by denying that there is anything to be explained . Weak anti-representationalism merely denies the primacy of representation, whereas the strong form denies its very existence. The manifold structure of representation allows for numerous possible permutations of these positions, but what we are interested in is the specific form that Harman's anti-representationalism takes. Obviously, with regard to the predicative dimension of representation, his approach involves a kind of strong anti-representationalism. insofar as it denies that there is anything like predica�ive success to be accounted for. However, with regard to the referential dimension of repre­ sentation, it is anti-representationalist in neither sense. Harman's account of predicative failure in terms of with­ · drawal depends upon a form of referential success, insofar as it claims that one real object is intentionally related to another real object that withdraws from it. The first object fails to grasp the second, but it nevertheless fails in its attempt to grasp that specific object. This shows that Harman does not eliminate either predicative purport. referential purport . or referential success. Moreover, it should be clear that Harman licenses broad use of these notions i n explanation i nsofar as the intentional relation forms the basis of his account of causation. If we pull on this thread a bit more, we will see

that Harman not only licenses their role in explanation, but in 115 essence transforms them into explanatory primitives which are not themselves accounted for, thereby revealing a pernicious representationalism u nderlying the anti -representationalism that was initially apparent. I n order to see this clearly, it will be useful to examine some other theories of reference whose explanatory problems parallel Harman's own : Meinong 's theory of su bsistence and Frege's theory of sense. I . S U B S I ST E N C E A N D S E N S E The essence of Meinong's theory of reference is that every thought has a referent. even if this referent does not actually exist (e. g . , a golden mountain) or never could exist (e.g . , a round square) . Such objects, although nonexistent. neverthe­ less possess a metaphysical status, which Meinong calls sub­ sistence. Subsistent object are like existent objects i n every respect other than existence. This means that they share what Meinong calls Sosein (or being-so) . A golden mountain exhibits goldenness and mountainhood in precisely the fash­ ion that my parents' wedding rings and Everest do. Even a round square is genuinely both round and square, although the conjunction of these properties precludes the possibility of existence. The problem with this theory is that although it might at first g lance seem to explain the difference between successful and failed reference, it means that all purported reference is now in some sense successful reference. It thus dodges the explanatory demand by transferring the issue from the representation to the thing represented . Brandom describes the problem best: The trouble with taking it that there is something that is suc­ cessfully represented by every purported representing is not just (}) c OJ (}) (}) _, m z 0 m )> z 0 (}) m z (}) m

115 that it involves commitment to a luxuriant ontology; ontological self-indulgence is a comparatively harmless vice. But it can be w en z w en 0 z <( w u z w ,__ en en IIl :::> en symptomatic of a failure to shoulder an explanatory burden. In this case it evidently (and ultimately unhelpfully) transforms the demand for an account of the relation between correct and incorrect. unfulfilled or merely purported and actually success­ ful representing. into a demand for an account of the relation between the statuses of what is represented i n the two cases: between mere subsistence and robust existence. 130 We might disagree with Brandom about the harmlessness of ontological self-indulgence, but his diagnosis is otherwise perfect: in Meinong's theory, the difference between suc­ cessful and failed reference is hypostatized i nto a primitive metaphysical d istinction between existent and su bsistent objects. This both fails to explain the relevant features of representation and simultaneously derives the metaphysical structure of the world from them. Frege's theory of reference is more explanatorily satisfac­ tory than Meinong 's, insofar as it sets out to solve the problem of how there can be i nformative identity claims. This is the question of how a claim like ' Hesperus is Phosphorus' can pro­ vide new information if both Hesperus and Phosphorus name the same object ( namely, the planet Venus) . The question is essentially as fol lows: What makes the informative claim ' H es­ perus is Phosphorus' different from the trivial claim ' H esperus is Hesperus'? Frege's answer is his famous distinction between sense and reference. He distinguishes the aspect of a represen­ tational content that purports to refer (sense) from the object it refers to (reference) . This means that the names ' H esperus' 130. Brandom. Making It Explicit. 71. my emphasis.

and ' Phosphorus' can have different senses even if they share 117 the same referent. and that the identity claim ( ' Hesperus is Phosphorus' ) is indeed informative, since someone may grasp the two senses without it being epistemically transparent that they refer to the same object. Frege's approach also avoids the trap Meinong falls into, insofar as it allows reference to fail­ there can be senses without referents (e.g . , 'the largest prime number', ' Santa Claus', etc . ) . But the problem with Frege's theory emerges in his account of what senses are. His basic idea is that senses are modes of presentation of objects, such that the same object (e.g .. Venus) can be presented in many different ways (e.g . , as the morning star and the evening star) . However, he is very clear that such modes of presentation are not subjective states of any kind. This would lead to some form of psychologism. In opposition to this, Frege claims that senses must be objective in order to ensure that the thoughts of dif­ ferent individuals can share the same representational content. A claim such as ' H esperus is a planet' has to mean the same thing upon my tongue as it does upon yours, even if we have dif­ ferent subjective experiences of Hesperus, and even if we disa­ gree about whether it is in fact Venus. The problem is that Frege achieves this objectivity by positing senses as abstract Platonic entities like mathematical objects. This hypostatizes referential pu rport i n much the same way that Meinong hypostatizes referential success and failure, thereby precluding a sufficient explanation of referential purport , including both how senses are individuated and how they are grasped by thinkers. Returning to Harman's own theory, we are now in a posi­ tion to examine the picture of representation contained in the implicit epistemology u nderlying its argument from identity.131 131 . See chapter 2.1, subsection 3. en c CD � en --< m z () m :l> z 0 en m z en m

118 >­ f0 "' 0:: 0 z <( w 0 z w Cl'. w LL w Cl'. What is i nteresting about this picture is that it combines aspects of both F regean and M e i nongian approaches­ although it is clear that whatever Fregean elements it has are inherited from H usserl . whose account is similar.132 The core of the picture is a distinction between the object-for-us and the object-in-itself. which correspond loosely to sense and reference. However. unlike Frege's sense and like Meinong's subsistent objects. the object-for-us is treated as genuinely possessing the properties we ascribe to the object-in-itself in the predicative part of representation. To put it another way, Harman's senses have Sosein. We've already noted that this is a pretty idiosyncratic conception of representation. and that it essentially prefigures Harman's full-blooded distinction between sensual and real objects. The task now is to show how this loose hybrid of Fregean/Husserlian and Meinongian ideas develops i nto that distinction. so as to u nearth some of the more tenebrous ideas motivating it. This means digging a little deeper into the theory of reference. I I . R E F E R E N C E A N D R I G I D I TY We must fi rst distinguish between referring de dicta and referring de re. This is the difference between those types of referring in which the choice of words composing the refer­ ring expression play an important role, and those in which there is an i ndependent relationship between the words and the thing referred to that is important . Referring using definite descriptions is the paradigm case of the former (e.g . . 'the .11 1st president of the U nited States' ) and referring using proper 132. Cf. P. Simmons, ' Meaning and Language', in B. Smith and D.W. Smith (eds) . The Cambridge Companion ta Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1995), 112.

names is the paradigm case of the latter (e.g . , ' Bill Clinton' ) . 119 Other important cases of de re reference include demonstra­ tives (e.g . , 'this' and 'that ' ) and indexica/s (e.g . , ' here' and 'now ' ) , but we will ignore these for the moment . The important thinkers to introduce here are Russell and Kripke. Russell 's famous theory of descriptions was designed to undermine Meinong's argument that we must posit subsistent objects (e.g . , the golden mountain) insofar as they have Sosein (e.g . , being golden and a mountain) by analysing claims using definite descriptions (e.g . , 'the golden mountain is awesome') i nto three parts ( i .e . , 'there is something that is a golden mountain' [existence] . 'there is only one of these' [uniqueness]. and ' it is awesome' [predication] ) . The salient point here is that Russell breaks down reference i nto two parts: existence and uniqueness, enabling him to give an analysis of the role that the descriptive content (the dictum) plays in determining reference. After this, Fregean senses, including those of proper names, tended to be understood as descriptive in the Russellian manner (or as de dicta senses) . This isn't really Frege's own view, but it is this supposed Frege/Russell axis that became the target of Kripke's arguments against descriptivist views of proper names. As we saw earlier. these show that definite descrip­ tions cannot account for the fact that proper names rigidly designate the same object across counterfactual scenarios. These arguments do indeed torpedo descriptivist approaches to proper names. but there is a whole school of neo-Fregeans (e. g . , Evans, McDowell, and Brandom) who overcome Kripke's arguments by providing an account of de re senses. We won't explore the i ntricacies of these debates any further, but will instead focus on Kripke's influence on Harman. ;u m -n m ;u m z 0 m )> z 0 ;u Gl 0 __, -<

120 >- >::: 0 (!) "' 0 z < UJ () z UJ "' UJ u.. UJ "' We have already examined Harman's explicit appeals to Kripke in our discussion of the argument from essence, 133 but we are now in a position to uncover a more subterranean influence, or at the very least a confluence of themes. It is first important to see that the representational notion of descriptive content corresponds to the metaphysical notion of Sosein. We can see this clearly from the role it plays in Russell's attempt to defuse Meinong 's argument for the necessity of subsistence. This means that. if one looks at Kripke from a principally metaphysical direction (as it seems Harman does), it might seem as if he has shown not only that there is more to the representational content of proper names than descriptions, but that there is more to the metaphysical constitution of objects than Sosein. This is perhaps encouraged by the fact that Kripke was quick to draw metaphysical conclusions from his own results, using them to motivate a neo-Aristotelian account of i ndividual and general essences. It certainly paral­ lels Harman's distinction between objects and their qualities, even if it is probably not the origin of it. Nonetheless, it is important to pay attention to the way this idea is manifest in Harman's account of representation. As we've see n , because Harman is a H usserl i a n , he demands something like the sense/reference distinction which Kripke abjures. This means demanding something like the de re senses with which the neo-Fregeans are concerned . However, Harman is still more of a Meinongian. insofar as he takes these senses to be objects in their own right. rather than mere representations of objects. Just as we purport to represent an object with certain qualities only insofar as we succeed in representing a special kind of object that possesses those 133. See chapter 2.2, subsection I l l .

qualities, so we purport to represent a unified object that is 121 more than these qualities only if we succeed in representing a special kind of object that is itself more than them. The Kripkean claim that names must be more than sets of descri p­ tions is thus transmuted into the H usserlo- Meinongian claim that sensual objects (which provide their senses) must be more than ' bundles of qualities'. Sensual objects pick out the real objects they correspond to directly, rather than picking them out indirectly through qualitative similarity. This leads to a situation i n which reference as such is collapsed i nto the metaphysical relation between sensual objects and their corresponding real objects.134 According to Harman, even if we grasp a sensual object by means of a definite description, this does not amount to grasping the real object by means of that description. However we may grasp the sensual object , its relation to the real object is a metaphysical black box, and the question whether we successfully represent something real at all cannot be answered since this box can never be levered open. Harman's representationalism is now in full view: he com­ bines the Fregean and Meinongian explanatory dodges in such a way that he precludes explaining either referential purport or referential success. For Meinorig it could at least be said that when we successfully refer to an existent object de dicta, we do so in virtue of a connection between the descriptive dictum and the object's Sosein. This cannot be said for Har­ man. The connection between the predicative and referential 134. It should be noted that this connection is not the same as Harman's category of sincerity, which is the relation between an experiencing real object and the sensual facade of another object it encounters, rather than between a real object and its own sensual counterpart. ;a m .., m ;a m z () m l> z 0 ;a Gi 0 =i -<

122 >- t::: w (.) (.) w <( I 0 z <( >- t::: _J <( ::> (/) z w (/) d i mensions of representation is thereby severed entirely. As such. his account of representation not only fails to explain it. but deliberately flaunts the demand for explanation. Everything is collapsed into a primitive metaphysical relation between sen­ sual and real objects whose provenance remains as mysterious as it is ubiquitous. This reconstruction of Harman's account of the referential dimension of representation does not neces­ sarily imply his account of the predicative dimension, namely, the withdrawal thesis that all such representation fails. That requires the additional arguments we have already addressed . However, it is important to see just how this account makes room for withdrawal: it does so by completely eliminating any role that description might play in picking out real objects. Harman makes it possible to occupy a position in which no properties we could possibly use to describe such objects cor­ rectly describe them. One can even see the sense in moving to such a position on this basis: if all genuine descriptive thought about entities i n themselves is referentially redundant. it may as well be redundant more generally. I l l . S E N S U A L I TY A N D H A E C C E I TY So much for the underlying representational logic of Harman's metaphysics. but there is still something more to be said about the manner in which sensual objects function as senses. In particular, it is worthwhile examining the manner in which Harman adapts the ideas of Ortega y Gasset in elaborating his account.135 Ortega holds that the unity things possess in our encounters with them consists in a unique feeling that is distinct from any of the particular qualities they exhibit. Harman adapts this claim into the idea that sensual objects 135. Guerrilla Metaphysics. chapter 8.

are feeling-things. whose independence from their sensual 123 qualities consists in the dissonance between this immediate feeling and any mediated purchase we might gain through consideration of these qualities. He deploys this idea in inter­ preting Kripke's theory as fol lows: [A] Kripkean theory of reference [uses] proper names to point to some unknown X called "gold" or "Richard N ixon," names that remain distinct from any known properties of these objects. What we have with proper names as rigid designators are the feeling-units "gold " or " N ixon." not gold and N ixon in them­ selves. since these consist only in executing their own reality and can never be reduced to names or thoughts any more than to definite descriptions. A proper name simply is not the thing itself. even if it points more closely to that thing than does an adjective. 136 This diverges from Kripke's own interpretation of his theory in two important ways. Firstly, as we have already noted . Kripke does not endorse anything like a sense/reference distinction . but adopts a Millian theory of names wherein the content of the name simply is the object referred to. On this view, the content of the names ' Hesperus' and ' Phosphorus' is the same, even if this is not transparent to us. and the identity claim ' Hesperus is Phosphorus' is a necessary truth , even if it is an a posteriori one. Secondly, and more importantly, Kripke tells a story about how names come to have the referents they do in virtue of the causal history of their usage. The details of this story are much disputed , but the basic idea is that there is some sort of initial naming event to which all subsequent uses 136. Ibid . . 109. (fJ m z (fJ c )> r _, -< )> z 0 I )> m 0 0 m _, -<

124 ,.. f­ U.J u u U.J <( I 0 z <( ,.. f­ _J <( :J UJ z U.J UJ of the word are causally connected , such that the referent of ' H esperus' can be traced back to the first time someone pointed at Venus in the night sky and uttered the word . What is important about this theory (and its successors)137 is that it aims to provide an explanation of how names purport to pick out u nique objects that transcends introspective analysis, be it a strictly causal theory or an account of the normative prag ­ matics governing the way language users track dependence relations between one another's uses of linguistic tokens.138 The salient point here is that, without this additional refer­ ential apparatus, there is little to distinguish proper names from demonstratives. This means that to talk of 'Hesperus' or ' Bill Clinton' is tantamount to talking about 'this' or 'that', in such a way that the use of a name is little better than a gesture we simply have to 'get'-something that points or orients us toward a unique and simple feeling. This semantic synthesis of Kripkean rigid designation and Husserlean nominal acts139 pro­ duces something resembling Russellian acquaintance: names function through a primitive act of reference, independent of any semantic framework that could make sense of it. This might be mediated insofar as there is a sensual sense standing between the subject and their real referent, but this means little when both the subject-sense relation and the sense-reference relation are themselves immediate. When converted back into a metaphysical register, this produces a pervasive haecceity: everything is principally characterised by its 'thisness', in such a way that the very feeling of thisness is a thing i n its own right. 137. Cf. Brandom's theory of anaphoric chains: Making It Explicit. chapters 5 and 7. 138. Ibid. 139. Cf. ' Physical Nature and the Paradox of Qualities', in Towards Specula­ tive Realism, 128, 137.

The problem with this axis of semantic acquaintance and 125 metaphysical haecceity is that it rests upon a phenomenologi­ cal fulcrum. I nsofar as the sensual object qua sense is phe­ nomenologically defined in terms of a feeling of uniqueness, it is destined to be imprisoned within the intentional relation that this feeling characterises. This is a point which Harman acknowledges to some extent: Sensual objects would not even exist if they did not exist for me, or for some other agent that expends its energy in taking them seriously. 140 However he is careful to qualify this so as to downplay any psychological interpretation: [T]he location of sensual objects cannot be inside the mind, since both the mind and its sensual objects are located on the interior of a more encompassing object. If I perceive a tree, this sensual object and I do not meet up inside my mind, and for a simple reason: my mind and its object are two equal partners in the intention, and the unifying term must contain both. 141 As far as Harman is concerned, sensual objects only exist inso­ far as they are contai ned within intentional relations between real objects: but even though these are modelled upon our own psychologically analysable encounters with things, their metaphysical provenance is more fundamental. Although this may distance Harman's account of sense from psychology, it still leaves it open to Frege's argument against psychologism: 140. The Quadruple Object. 74 . 141. Ibid .. 115-16. (fJ m z (fJ c l> r _, -< l> z 0 I l> m 0 0 m _, -<

126 >1llJ u u llJ <( I 0 z <( >1:::J <( ::> en z llJ en as long as the sensual object through which I encounter Venus only exists on the inside of an intentional relation between myself and Venus. it cannot function as a sense that is com­ mon to the thoughts of different subjects. This means that the representational content of ' Hesperus' must be different in my mouth than it is in yours. Obviously, this problem with containment reveals a crucial i nadequacy i n Harman's approach to representation, but it equally causes problems for his metaphysics, i nsofar as it undermines his treatment of unreal objects (e. g . , Popeye, El Dorado, phlogiston, etc.). Harman has previously put forward the ability of his account of sensual objects to explain such things as fictional entities as one of its most compelling fea­ tures.142 He has presented those who would deny ontological status to fictions and similar things as metaphysical party­ poopers, who would deny artists and others the menagerie of objects with which they intuitively grapple. By contrast, and in line with Meinong 's theory of subsistence, he aims to allow such entities a sort of metaphysical status even if he denies them reality in the full-blooded sense.143 This is meant to open u p the possibility of appealing to Popeye qua sensual object in explaining the role that fictions play in the domains of art and social theory. However, the containment of sensual objects within intentional relations in fact closes off this possibility. This is because no sensual object can be the Popeye. I nstead, we have a plurality of Popeye objects spread across the various 142. 'The Road to Objects', in Continent 3.1 (201 1 ) , 171-9. 143. During a Transcendental Ontology summer school at the U niversity of Bonn, Harman suggested that he was reconsidering his views on this point. and was open to the idea that fictional objects are in fact real objects in some sense. This would of course blunt the current objection, but only by abandon­ ing the supposed advantage of the sensual/real distinction it argues against.

intentional relations entered into by Popeye lovers everywhere. 127 The old man chuckling at a Popeye comic, the child fixated on a Popeye cartoon, and the woman idly speculating about her friend 's resemblance to the eponymous sailor are all focused u pon a distinct feeli ng-thing unique to their own experience. These are distinct sensual objects that pop in and out of exist­ ence along with the relevant intentions, and thus cannot be deployed in explaining common features of such encounters. I ronically, this means that despite i ncorporating aspects of both Fregean and Meinongian approaches to representation, the resulting doctrine of containment vitiates the advantages of both. I V. M E TA P H O R A N D M EA N I N G We have now more or less completely circumscribed Har­ man's account of representation, but we must still address his account of metaphor.144 There are two reasons for this: On the one hand, H arman holds that the semantic (or 'cogni­ tive' ) content of metaphor is of a different type than that of ordinary representation ( paradigmatically, literal language) . On the other, he cashes this out in terms of the idea that we encounter sensual objects as unities that exceed any of their particular qualities. He makes both points clearly in his criti­ cism of Donald Davidson's theory of metaphor: Davidson's central prejudice is his notion that there is only one kind of cognitive content : that of plain, literal prose. I n fact. there are exactly two kinds of cognitive content. There is the kind concerned with attributes. and the kind concerned with a thing as a total infrastructure that unifies those attributes. [ . . . ] 144. Guerrilla Metaphysics, chapter 8. ;;;: m __, l> u I 0 JJ l> z 0 ;;;: m l> z z Gl

The reason we cannot decide the literal content of a metaphor is because it has a meaning that can never be paraphrased . 145 12a (9 z z <l'. w ::;; 0 z <l'. c:: 0 I "- ;:: w ::;; Harman defends this idea by considering two examples: 'the cypress is a flame' (taken from Ortega y Gasset) and 'man is a wolf' (taken from Max Black ) . In each case he claims that what is at stake is something other than a straightforward comparison of the properties of each term. There may be some superficial resemblance between the two that triggers the metaphoric connection (e.g . , the similar shape of the cypress tree and a flickering flame) , but this only serves to call our attention to more indirect resonances between the systems of properties the two exhibit. For Harman, the metaphorical connection between wolf and man does not consist in 'discovering that both humans and wolves have backbones and two eyes, inhabit portions of Alaska, and live in violent hierarchical packs'. but in the transposition of a way of thinking about the former onto our way of thinking about the latter, so that we come to view man through the lens of wolfhood .146 To take the quote from Black that Harman himself uses: A suitable hearer will be led by the wolf-system of implica­ tions to construct a corresponding system of implications about the principal subject [i.e .. ' Man'] [ ... ] Any human traits that can without undue strain be talked about in 'wolf-language' will be rendered prominent, and any that cannot will be pushed into 145. Ibid . . 122-3. 146. Ibid .. 119.

the background. The wolf-metaphor suppresses some details, emphasizes others-in short, organizes our view of man . 1 4 7 129 ;::: m This seems to me a fairly apposite description of how meta­ phor functions. but I am far less sanguine about the way Harman i nterprets this within his metaphysical framework. This is because he slides directly from the idea that metaphors involve a correspondence between systems of properties to the idea that they involve a correspondence between unitary systems that are somehow in excess of their properties. i .e .. a correspondence between sensual objects. To interject another quote from the critique of Davidson: This is already quite visible in the ambivalence of the very phrase 'wolf-system', since any system is both singular and plural simul­ taneously: a system of features, and a system of features. 148 There is of course some u n ity i nvolved in the systems of implication that are transposed here. but it is not clear that this unity has the character that Harman imputes to it. He thinks that the terms of the metaphor pick out distinct sen­ sual objects (e.g .. cypress-feeling and flame-feeling ) , and that the metaphorical connection between the two creates a t h i rd such object ( 'cypress-flame-feeling-th ing ' ) which consists in the perpetually unresolved tension between their features.149 It is such fused-objects that supposedly constitute the semantic content proper to metaphor. However. it is not 1'17. M. Black. ' M etaphor'. in Models and Metaphors ( Ithaca. NY: Cornell Uni­ versity Press. 1962) . '11. 1'18. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 122. 1'19. Ibid . , 109. --< l> 1J I 0 ;o l> z 0 ;::: m l> z z Ci)

130 obvious that the transposition between systems of implication moves beyond the features of the things considered . even if CD z z <( LU ::;: 0 z <( "' 0 I (L <( f­ l.LI ::;: it does move beyond simple comparison of them- let alone that it constitutes a fused-sense distinct from those the metaphor relates. The problem becomes more apparent if we consider the wolf-metaphor in more detail. Whereas the cypress example deals with individuals ( ' the cypress ' ) , the wolf ex�mple deals with general kinds ( ' man', rather than 'a man' ) . Harman elides this difference when he elucidates the metaphor: On the one hand. what we have are two simple unities. human and wolf, whatever they may be: no one in the world can give an exhaustive description of the features of these entities. The words point us vaguely towards recognizable stock characters of the cosmos without specifying any of their traits in particular. On the other hand, human and wolf are not just units, but determinate units. Although none of us can sum up everything there is to know about these two very dangerous animals, we can all give a fairly rough description of them. 150 These general kinds-human and wolf-may be legitimately _ thought of as unities of a sort , insofar as they u n ify sets of featu res that are common to the groups of i ndividuals (humans and wolves) that instantiate them; but this does not necessarily make them units. Harman has certainly not put forward any platonic theory of u niversals that would enable him to treat them as objects in their own right (though neither has he ruled such a thing out ) . 1 50. Ibid . , 118-19.

In the absence of such a theory, one might argue that we 131 are dealing with arbitrary individuals (e. g . , 'a man' and 'a wolf' that are nevertheless not identical with any given man -0r ;::: m -; their kind. One could even make a case for generic individu­ :J> " I 0 :u :J> z 0 als (e.g . , 'the generic man' and 'the generic wolf' ) , wherein ;::: m wolf) , wherein the features of the individual considered are restricted purely to those held in common by instances of the features the individual possesses are only those held in common by instances of their kind. I n each case the indi­ vidual would be a sensual object that would not even need to have a real counterpart . Nevertheless, in either case the u nity i n question-that of a set of features common to a kind of individual-is not the u nity of the arbitrary or generic individual , but a prior u nity that they presuppose insofar as they are defined as an arbitrary or generic instance of this kind. This is made more problematic by the fact that we can construct examples of metaphors relating unities that are neither individuals nor general kinds: 'to be powerful is to be poisoned ', 'the taste of chocolate is the taste of tears', or ' love is nought but gravitation'. These metaphors connect non-sortal151 properties and relations, and, as such , the unity of features they involve has nothing to do with the unity of the individuals that might exhibit them . What t h i s shows is that t h e u nity in question is not the unity of senses qua objects, but the unity of objects qua senses. Metaphors can establish connections between objects, properties (sortal and non-sorta l ) , relations, and whatnot , even when they are not defined (or even defi nable) through an exhaustive set of features. They do so by connecting the more 151. See p. 256-7 below for an explanation of the difference between sortal and non-sortal properties. :J> z z Gl

132 or less unified 'systems of implications' that the corresponding words are bound u p in.152 This is just to say that metaphors are (!) z z <( w ::; 0 z <( er 0 I 0.. ;'.': w ::; concerned with meanings whose unity persists despite lacking an explicit definition, rather than objects whose unity exceeds any possible definition. This is adequately demonstrated by the fact that we can use family resemblance terms in crafting metaphors. The classic example of such a term-'game'-we owe to the later Wittgenstein.153 This term is meant to pick out a variety of different practices that share overlapping chains of similarities (e.g .. competition, scores, stakes, etc.) which nevertheless fail to amount to a core of common features, or a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for being a game (i.e .. for any of the relevant features an example can be found that lacks it) . It is possible to construct metaphors which not only function despite but even thrive upon this incipient plurivocity. Take the suggestive phrase: 'Capitalism is the game of accumulation.' This invites us to think about capitalism in terms of the rules. aims, and associated behaviours of games, but it does not restrict us to any core group of these features. We might conjure up the image of capitalism as a game one plays against oneself (e.g .. solitaire) , the aim of which is only one's own personal wealth; but we might equally conceive it as a competition in which personal wealth becomes a score through which to compare oneself to others. There are numer­ ous other poi nts of contact : team behaviour, chance and risk, interacting play strategies. playfulness, enjoyment. and 1 5 2 . I do not wish t h i s point t o b e dependent upon m y o w n commitment to semantic inferentialism. but it is worthwhile pointing out that for this approach the meaning of a word consists precisely in such a 'system of implications', insofar as semantic content consists in inferential role. 153. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001 ) , §§65-69.

the other overlapping semantic threads that are woven into 133 the meaning of 'game'. The way these are connected in the meaning of a single word provides us with a veritable buffet of possible implications.154 A lot more could be said on this topic, but for now, the above considerations suggest that metaphorical language and descriptive language do not bear distinct types of semantic content. If metaphors are not translatable into plain descrip­ tions, this is not because they deploy a different kind of content. but because they deploy the same kind of content in a different fashion. Of course, metaphor plays many different roles in our linguistic l ives ( both aesthetic and expressive) , and I do not aim to offer anything like a comprehensive alternative theory here. However, I will suggest that the transposition of systems of implication so appositely described by Black is adequately explained in terms of semantic g rafting. The wolf-metaphor organises our view of man by offering us the opportunity to take whatever bits of semantic structure we like from the concept of wolf and experimentally transplant them onto the concept of man. This is not only to transpose properties from one kind to the other (e.g .. predatoriness, pack-mentality, etc.), but to transpose more or less complex patterns of reasoning about relationships (e.g . . 'man is to x, as wolf is to y', 'the his­ tory of the domestication of wolves into breeds of dog, as a 154. Family resemblance terms are only one example of this sort of complex and underlying semantic structure. At least as far back as Aristotle's discus­ sion of the term ' health', we have been aware of words with multiple meanings that are related through a primary meaning (so-called core-dependent hom­ onyms) . More recently, Mark Wilson has provided an exceptionally in-depth analysis of these sorts of complex semantic structure in terms of what he calls theory facades ( M . Wilson, Wandering Significance [Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 2006] ) . ;;:: m ;! " I 0 ;u :» z 0 ;;:: m :» z z G'l

134 model for the history of the cultural development of divisions of labour', etc.) .155 This is a creative process · in which both C!J z z <( UJ ::; 0 z <( 0:: 0 I a.. the extent and ultimate results of the semantic graft are not immediately apparent . The metaphor merely functions as an invitation to such semantic experimentation. On the one hand, this shows that disparate terms such as 'game' merely provide us with a greater range of samples to g raft from. On the other, ;:: it reveals the development of metaphors into analog ies as ::; the formalisation of these experiments, in which the specific UJ correspondences and their precise scope are gradually made explicit. This reinforces the earlier point that, despite its differ­ ence from description, metaphor is not for all that opposed to definition. It may often and profitably deal with words that are without definition, but equally, it lays the foundations of the process of defining them. by allowing us to borrow content from some terms to improve our grasp of others. 155. I cannot be more precise than this without returning to the topic of infer­ entialism (see footnote 152 on p. 132, above) . The loose idea would be that metaphor enables us to abstract inference schemas implicit in the content of some concept and modify them in such a way that they can be incorporated into another concept, however tentatively.

2 . Q UA L I T I ES A N D Q U A L I A I have already said much about the problematic intersection of phenomenological and metaphysical themes in Harman's work, but it is worth discussing what I consider the most egregious result of this methodological car crash i n more detail. I refer to the conceptual disaster that is Harman's theory of qualities. There are three related criticisms to be made of this theory: ( i ) that in taking sensible qualities (e.g . , colour, texture, weight, etc.) as its model it provides an i mpoverished account of empirical properties more generally (e.g . , chemical composi­ tion, electrical conductivity, mass, etc.) ; ( i i ) that in focusing u pon qualities as tropes it precludes any account of qualities as universals; and (iii) that in insisting on the non-relational actuality of real qualities it u ndermines the possibility of any positive account of modality. Taken together these criticisms show that the pervasive metaphysics of haecceity identi­ fied i n the last section straddles the object/quality distinc­ tion, leaving us lost amidst a swarming mass of thises that appear to us thusly, with nothing to tell between them but more thisness. I . S E N S I B LE QUALITI ES A N D E M P I R I CA L P R O P E RT I E S The first criticism stems from the observation that the exam­ ples of sensual qualities provided by Harman throughout his work are almost exclusively sensible: e.g . , 'an apple is not the sum total of its red , slippery, cold , hard , and sweet features'.156 This is to say that they are the sorts of features one would 1 56. The Quadruple Object, 25. 135 ID c l> r =< m (/) l> z 0 ID c l> r :;;:

136 <( :::; <( ::> (!) 0 z <( (/) w >­ :::; <( ::> (!) pick out if one were asked to describe the features of an object available to one's senses, or to describe the object as it appears to them. This is unsurprising given the phe­ nomenological origins of Harman's metaphysics in this sort of introspection.157 However, the domain of sensual qualities is supposed to extend beyond the reach of the senses to include those features that lie only within the reach of the intellect: e.g . , the electrical conductivity of a piece of copper, the rate of inflation in a national economy, or the charge and spin of subatomic particles. Though the identification and study of these features is empirical insofar as it depends upon perceptual observation, this study is mediated by experimental apparatuses, scientific procedures, and theoretical edifices in a way that- the immediate deliverances of our senses are not. There is thus a legitimate question as to whether the model of sensual qualities Harman draws from the sensible can be extended to the more broadly empirical. It must be admitted that the intuitive contrasts between sense/intellect and immediate/mediated access which moti­ vate this question are deliberately not very precise. This is because the ways in which Harman registers these contrasts are so tangled as to discourage premature precision. We can see the two main ways he does this in the following paragraph: I n Husserl's philosophy, not all qualities are transient accidents floating along the surface of things and shifting with the flow of time. Some qualities are the essential ones. without which the thing would not be what it is for us, and these are the ones to 157. An extended example of this sort of introspective analysis of sensual qualities can be found in Harman's discussion of the imaginary battle of cen­ taurs in Guerrilla Metaphysics (§108).

be found through the so called "eidetic reduction ." That is why 137 I often use the name eidos for this tension between accessible sensual objects and the inaccessible qualities that are of struc­ tural importance for them. In Lovecraft this happens as a result of scientific failure. with the unstated implication that scientific success would have given us the real qualities. And H usserl generally seems to agree. holding that complete knowledge of the qualities is possible. Yet he also admits that they can never be sensual, but can be known only through the mind , and in this way he at least concedes that they are not of the same order as sensual qualities. 158 What we have here are two different ways of introducing the d istinction between real (essential ) and sensual (acciden­ tal ) qualities. The first is the argument from eidos discussed earlier.159 As we have seen, this argument aims to derive the distinction through a reading of H usserl's method of eidetic variation. The peculiarity of this derivation consists in how it h inges u pon a difference between the sensual and the intellectual which it subsequently collapses. The second is contained in Harman's interpretation of the work of H . P. Love­ craft. in which he claims that Lovecraft manages to allude to the existence of real qualities by describing the inability of empirical science to classify the alien artifacts discovered by his protagonists. This hinges u pon a difference between mere sense perception and thoroughgoing empirical investigation that Harman again collapses. In each case. Harman appeals to an intellectual process that is supposed to move beyond the qualities that are immediately perceived to gain intuitive 158. Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (Winchester: Zero Books. 2012). 1 59. See chapter 2.2, subsection II. iU c )> r � rn [fJ )> z 0 IU c )> r )>

13s =" ...J "" :J C!J 0 z "" CJ) w f­ ...J "" :J C!J purchase upon a deeper order of qualities. only to then deny that the process can actually achieve access to this order. What this means is that, in order to establish the distinc­ tion between real and sensual qualities, Harman appeals to something like the intuitive contrasts underlying the distinction between the empirical and the sensible-only to then subdue those contrasts by subsuming the empirical within the sensual . This manoeuvre is highly suspect. but what should concern us for the moment is how the appeals to eidetic variation and empirical investigation encourage us to think about sensual qualities, and to what extent they provide different intuitive purchase u pon the notion. To this end, we must focus upon the way in which they incline us to characterise the immediacy of sense perception, insofar as it is the attempt to intellectually transcend this immediacy that constitutes their striving for real qualities. rather than any positive conception of what they are striving toward . As such , the failure to achieve knowledge of real qualities is to be u nderstood as a failure to overcome the immediate in some sense, and the empirical belongs to the sensual insofar as it partakes in this i ntractable immediacy.160 The appeal to eidetic variation encourages us to character ise the immediacy of sense perception in terms of perspective. This can be seen from the way that Harman associates the accidents presented by sense perception with perceptual profiles or adumbrations of objects seen from different per­ spectives, be they merely spatio-temporal or i nvolving other variations i n observational conditions. He does this either by contrasting them with essential qualities, or by means of examples: 160. Harman identifies this immediacy as the crucial feature of the sensual realm (or 'ether') in Guerrilla Metaphysics (153).

We cannot construct a mailbox by piling up essential qualities any more than by piling up outward profiles. The object is one: its qualities are many. whether they be accidental or eidetic. 161 139 0 c l> r � [W] hen I approach a tower and see it by means of slightly differ­ ent qualities at each moment, I ignore these variations as unim­ portant, as if they were the mere jewellery of the princess rather than the Royal Highness herself. In general, perception is the zone of accidents of a thing as distinct from the thing itself. 162 Eidetic variation is thus an exercise of the imagination that aims to compare, contrast, and explore such varying perspec­ tives on an object and the accidental features they display i n order t o uncover t h e i nvariant essence that supports them. This suggests that the distinction between sensual and real qualities is that between those that are somehow perspec­ tive-dependent and those that are perspective-independent. This means that eidetic variation fails because perspective is somehow ineliminable. This is consistent with Harman's claim that no number of different perspectives on an object is suf­ ficient to grasp it-even every possible perspective.163 The appeal to empirical i nvestigation encourages us to characterise the immediacy of sense perception in terms of givenness. This point requires a good deal of reconstruction on our part, since Harman does not elaborate on the example he d raws from Lovecraft in any detail. We can perhaps su pple­ ment this example with a passage from The Quadruple Object: 161. The Quadruple Object, 27. 162. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 187. 163. Ibid .. 17. m (/) l> z 0 0 c l> r l>

140 The necessary qualities of a sensual object are sunk beneath its surface like the hull of a Venetian galley, invisible to the observer '.'t; _J <( :::0 Cl D z <( (/") w ,::: _J <( :::0 Cl who is dazzled by the flags and emblems covering the ship, or the music played on its deck by captive singers and drummers. Though the hull is submerged, it remains vital for the seaworthi­ ness of the ship. By analogy, the real qualities of the sensual object can only be inferred indirectly rather than witnessed. 164 This passage suggests that the distinction between sensual and real qualities can be understood in terms of the difference between those properties that are directly given to our senses and those whose presence must be indirectly inferred from this information. For example, one might distinguish the colour, malleability, and even perhaps the peculiar tangy taste of a piece of copper wire from its electrical conductivity, its melting point, and from a litany of its more interesting chemical and physical properties. If we u nderstand empirical investigation as the exercise of reason in drawing inferences about the unobservable on the basis of the observable, then this seems to capture the relevant intuitive contrast . Nevertheless, this is . insufficient if it treats givenness in purely negative terms-as opposed to inferential mediation-insofar as it leaves us with no sense of what scientific reasoning is failing to transcend through i nference, I think the positive conception of givenness implicitly guiding Harman's picture here is i nextricably bound u p with some conception of qualia -the intrinsic character of the sensations corresponding to sensible qualities. 'what it is like' to experience them, or how they are given . The view I have in mind is that sensible qualities are dependent upon their mode 16"1. The Quadruple Object, 29.

of givenness. i nsofar as our grasp of them consists in a sort of 1�1 immediate acquaintance with their qualia in introspection. For example, one might hold that it is possible for a colour blind scientist to know everything about colour perception in normal human visual systems. and to know that an object is red . either by testimony or i nference. without thereby knowing what it is for it to be red. insofar as she has never experienced the sensation of redness.165 I have to be careful in attributing this view to Harman. On the one hand . the sort of introspection i n terms of which qualia are defi.ned cannot be u nderstood as access to anything like raw 'sense data', such as isolated colour patches that have yet to be unified i nto objects, as he very clearly rejects this idea . 166 On the other, if this introspection is simply u nderstood as access to the sensual realm of objects and qualities, then it would seem as if we have merely gone in a circle. What suggests this interpretation regardless is the way it interacts with a further distinction between types of qualities that seems to be lurking i n the background. I refer to the traditional distinction between those proper­ ties that things possess independently of observation. and those properties that can only be u nderstood in terms of their relation to observers. For example. one could distinguish the shape. motion. and solidity of the piece of copper wire from its colour. taste, and smel l . This is the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.167 Although he explicitly claims that 165. This example is obviously borrowed from Frank Jackson's infamous knowledge argument ( F. Jackson, ' Epiphenomena! Qualia', in Philosophical Quarterly 32 [1984 ] . 127-36). 166. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 156-9. 167. Meillassoux has famously called for the resurrection of this distinction by characterising primary qualities as those that are independent of observation insofar as they are inherently mathematisable (After Finitude. chapter 1 ) . 0 c )> r:: __, m (/) )> z 0 0 c )> r l>

1�2 ' [o] bject-oriented philosophy makes no distinction between p ri mary and secondary qualities'.168 what H a rman appears '.'i: _J <( ::J °' 0 z <( (/) w f-­ _J <( ::J °' to be denying is that there is any such distinction internal to either the domain of sensual qualities or that of real qualities. We have already seen that Harman constructs his distinc­ tion between sensual and real qualities out of that between accidental and essential qualities, by harnessing the intuitive contrasts we have been outlining; but we can see the influence of the contrast between secondary and primary qualities here too, in his description of real/essential qualities as those of 'structural importance'. or. by way of Zubiri 's conception of 'the physical'. as those ' pertaining to all that belongs intrinsically to any object'.169 This emphasis on the structural and the intrinsic is traditionally associated with discussion of primary qualities. The i nteraction between these ideas consists in the fact that it is precisely the sort of dependence on the mode of givenness characteristic of sensible qualities that is usually taken to distinguish secondary from primary qualities. It is insofar as a mode of givenness is not merely dependent u pon the observed object. but also upon the sensory capacities of the observer, that a quality dependent upon it cannot be thought of as i ntrinsic to the object . Put more concretely, i nsofar as 'what it is like' to sense the redness of an apple is thought to be inherently subjective. it cannot be said to present an objective feature of the apple. We can see that these ideas are at play in Harman's thinking during one of his discussions of Ortega y Gasset: 1 68. Guerrilla Metaphysics. SL!. 169. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 98; cf. Tool-Being. §22.

Ortega's traditional breakthrough , already a half-step further 1�3 than Heidegger ever went, consists in his noticing that there is also an executant inner reality stirring behind the facades of buckets, candles, supermarkets. clay-pits, bank robberies. helicopter accidents, and trees. He cites the example of a red leather box lying before him, and notes that the redness and smoothness of the box are mere perceptions in his mind, while the box itself is actually embedded in the fate of being red and smooth-unlike Ortega himself. I n one of the most radical sen­ tences of twentieth-century philosophy, he tells us that "just as there is an I-John Doe, there is also an I-red, an I-water. and an I-star ... Everything . from the point of view within itself. is an l .'' 170 Here the intrinsic character of the redness and smoothness of Ortega's perceptions of the box are taken to be distinct from the intrinsic character of the box's being-red and being­ smooth. Put differently, what it is like to experience redness and smooth ness is distinguished from what it is like to be red and smooth. This is the archetypal form of the distinction between sensual and real qualities. What is interesting about it is that it frames the inaccessibility of real qualities as the inac­ cessibility of the ' inwardness of things'171 or a thing 's ' point of view within itself'. This is to say that it treats the inaccessibility of a thing 's real qualities as analogous to the i naccessibility of someone else's qualia. This indicates that there is a sense in which Harman uses sensible qualities as a model not just for sensual qualities. but for qualities per se. We will return to this point later. 170. Guerrilla Metaphysics. 104 . 171. Ibid . , 105. iLJ c )> r ::! m (/) )> z 0 iLJ c )> r :;;:

144 For now, it is important to recognise that. despite what has just been said , Harman is not committed to the idea that there :,: ...J <( ::> (l) 0 z <( (/) w >::: ...J <( ::> (l) is a one-to-one mapping between sensual and real qualities, as if every sensual quality (e.g . , sensual red ) simply repre­ sented a corresponding real quality (e.g . , real red ) . H is appeal to empirical i nvestigation is meant to suggest that the way sensual qualities are individuated should not reveal the way real qualities are individuated , much as the sensation of weight does not reveal the i ntricate relationship between i ntrinsic mass and extrinsic gravitational fields. However, i nsofar as mass is supposed to be as much a sensual quality as weight. Harman wants to say that they must both somehow consist in entirely distinct real qualities, even though their relationship to these qualities cannot be explanatorily circumscribed in the same way as that between mass and weight themselves. This is why Harman categorises the relation between sensual and real qualities as a matter of 'duplicity'. Nevertheless, it is enlightening to consider how all of this connects to the implicit account of representation we examined earlier. What we established there was that Harman u nderstands representing an object-in-itself as possessing a certai n quality (e.g . , believing that an apple is red ) as standing i n a certain relation to an object-for-us that actually possesses this quality. What we can now see is that this does not so much explain the representational content of sense perception (e.g . , seeing that an apple i s red ) a s employ sense perception as a model for all representational content. On this model , the relation to the object-for-us i n which representation consists is analogous to sensation, and u nderstanding the content of one's representations is analogous to introspecting the

deliverances of one's senses.172 This is to say that the object­ 145 for-us (the dimension of referential purport) is treated as a sensory appearance, and its qualities (the di mension of predicative purport) as its corresponding qualia. It is the fact that Harman's sensual realm is derived from this model of rep­ resentational purport that makes sensual qualities essentially perspectival and immediately given. Thus the interesting question is why the relation between sensual and real qualities is essentially duplicitous, given that it seems to be implicitly derived from representation. The answer is that this derivation proceeds by ignoring the distinc­ tion between the vehicle of a representation and its content. This distinction is important because it is possible for distinct representations to have the same content (e.g . , for there to be different copies of the same novel, different maps of the same terrain, or utterances in different languages that say the same thing ) . I n these cases we have distinct vehicles whose properties may diverge even though they express the same content (e.g . , books of different sizes and formats, maps with different colours and scales, or utterances with differ­ ent phonology and grammar) . Although Harman has nothing concrete to say about the nature of sensation as a vehicle of representation (e.g . , the causal -functional structure of our particular sensory systems) , the disconnect between sensual and real qualities he proposes is predicated upon treating the former as the properties of sensation qua representational vehicle. If we take representation to consist in the object-for-us sharing the qualities of the object-in-itself while simultaneously 172. I think it likely that this is a derivative of H usserl's account of intuitive ful­ filment (Logical Investigations. vol. 2. tr. J. M . Findlay [ New York and London: Routledge. 2001 ] , I nvestigation V I ) . ID c )> r ::; m Cf) )> z 0 ID c )> r :;;

1�6 treating the object-for-us as a sensory appearance. then it becomes impossible to represent qualities that cannot be possessed by such appearances. One then only has to think that the relevant qualities of these appearances are unique to them in order to make correct representation of any sort impossible. This is precisely the significance of treating them as qualia that are inextricably tied to their mode of givenness within introspection. Returning to our initial question then, the failure of Har­ man's account of sensual qualities to do justice to empirical properties is indexed by the extent to which the model of representation from which it is derived fails to do justice to the representations of the world produced by the sciences. Although the account seems intuitively plausible in the case of beliefs that can be observationally acquired (or confirmed ) , i nsofar a s w e can always imagine their objects (as i f we were observing them ) , it becomes rapidly less plausible the further we move i nto the realm of the u nobservable. For instance, though it is certainly possible that physicists pic­ ture the interactions between quarks in their mind's eye, it would seem absurd to claim that their understanding of the flavours of these quarks (e.g . , up, down, strange, charm, etc. ) consisted in their acquaintance with t h e intrinsic character of these pictures, rather than their mastery of the mathemati­ cal intricacies of the standard model . Moreover, beyond the applicability of some notion of perceptual adumbration or visual profile, it becomes equally strange to talk about their ' perspec­ tive' u pon the quarks in anything other than a metaphorical sense (e. g . , ' historical perspective' ) . However, although this disanalogy between sensory experience and scientific theory demonstrates the inadequacy of sensual qualities in relation to the empirical properties the latter represents, the full scope of

this inadequacy will only become apparent once we address w the remaining two criticisms. I I . Q U A L I TY A N D H A E C C E I TY The second criticism of H a rman's theory of qualities was prefigured in my earlier comments on his appropriation of Hei­ degger's account of the as-structure173 and H usserl 's account of eidos,174 which entirely ignore both philosophers' concerns with generality, and in my discussion of his account of meta­ phor, which tends to elide the d isti nction between i ndividuals and general kinds. This implicit rejection of generality becomes explicitly codified in Harman's theory of qualities: H usserl speaks of real qualities in generic terms, such that a cer­ tain shade of green can be embodied in many different particular objects; the same holds for the "eternal objects" of Whitehead, and for most other thinkers who have dealt with the topic of essence. By contrast, qualities as described in this book are always individualized by the object to which they belong. To put it in the terms of analytic philosophy, they are "tropes".175 [Qualities] are not changeable from one object to the next, since we have seen that they belong entirely to the object from which they emerge. 176 Whatthis means is that the qualities possessed by an object are always unique: an apple is not generically red in a manner 173. See chapter 2.1 . subsection I. 174 . See chapter 2.2. subsection II. 175. The Quadruple Object, 30. 176. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 232. IU c )> r _, -< )> z 0 I )> m () () m _, -<

1�a >­ f­ w u u w <( I 0 z <( >­ f­ that could be shared with other apples, but displays a pattern and shade of redness whose i nfinite detail is such that , in principle, it could not be shared with anything else. It is worth considering the origins of this surfeit of specificity. The above quotes present it as a feature of both real and sensual qualities that derives from their relation to the object that possesses them, but this is not the only way in which Harman presents it. I n Guerrilla Metaphysics, Harman borrows the term 'ele­ _J <( :J Cl ment' from Levinas to distinguish the completely specific qualities of sensual objects from the impossible ' free floating' qualities that he equates with 'raw sense data'.177 Taking the most detailed example he provides: An element is a sensual object incarnated in highly specific form. If the sensual object is the monkey that seems identical to us through all variations in our perceptions of it. the element is always the monkey at twilight or dawn, viewed from a specific angle or in a determinate mood. and currently eating, climb­ ing. fighting, or screeching with accidents. like a car glistening with ice after an overnight storm [ ... ] An element is always one specific. ruthlessly sincere incarnation of a sensual object. An element is not just the monkey in its pure perceptual monkey­ hood . enduring over time. but rather the monkey down to every last trivial detail of its actions and physical posture. 178 177. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 1 59-67. It is quite difficult to follow the discussion of elements in GM. For example. we are at one point told that 'In this respect. we can say that the elements ore the notes of sensual abjects' (171) only to be informed later that: ' We now determine, somewhat paradoxically, that the elements of the world are nothing other than sensual objects'. (178). The fol­ lowing interpretation is the most consistent I have been able to piece together in spite of such apparent contradictions. 178. Guerrilla Metaphysics. 19"1-5.

What this means is that, in effect, elements are just the per- 1�9 ceptual profiles of sensual objects. The uniqueness of these profiles is not directly derived from the individuality of their objects, but consists in the way in which their various details are enmeshed with one another. This is another aspect of sensual qualities that Harman draws from sense perception. Specifically, it is drawn from the inevitable excess of sensory details over our ability to describe what we see. It seems that the sheer immediacy of this excess is supposed to prevent us from separating out these details without distorting them. However, insofar as these details are themselves qualities, this suggests that qualities derive their uniqueness from their rela­ tions to one another. The problem with this is that it collapses an object's plurality of qualities i nto a single unitary quality. And indeed this is precisely the position that Harman is forced i nto: 'The oneness of a sensual flame is no different from the particularity of that flame, because its [qualities] (or rather, the single flame- [ quality] ) exist only within that union.'179 Once this line is crossed, there is nothing to prevent this singular quality from dissolving into the unitary object that possesses it: 'All objects are both u nified and completely specific in the same stroke, not by way of two separate dimensions, not even if these dimensions are termed " inseparable" '.180 Harman pulls back from this position after Guerrilla Meta­ physics and abandons talk of elements entirely. As far as I can tell , this is because it u ndermines the object/quality axis of the fourfold schema , the preservation of which is essential for the system of categories developed in The Quadruple Object. Har­ man continues to discuss the uniqueness of sensual qualities 179. Ibid .. 228. 180. Ibid. cu c l> r � -< l> z 0 I l> m 0 0 m � -<

150 >t:: w 0 0 w <l'. I 0 z <l'. >­ f­ _J <l'. ::J () in a manner reminiscent of sensory excess, but he grounds it in the relation between these qualities and the objects they belong to rather than any relations between the qualities them­ selves ( now categorially circumscribed as radiations) . Qualities cannot be shared by multiple objects because they essentially belong to specific individuals. This creates a serious problem for Harman's account of real qualities. A crucial feature of the argument from essence was the Leibnizian contention that the individuation of real objects requires that they possess a multiplicity of qualities. This means that they are never simply distinct from one another, but are always distinct in virtue of some qualities that they do not share. However, if objects can never share any qualities because qualities are always u nique to their objects, then objects are distinct from one another in virtue of the fact that they are distinct from one another, or rather, they are simply distinct. Furthermore, even if we took the uniqueness of qualities to be primitive rather than derived , this would still undermine the requ i rement that an object possess many qualities, as a single quality would be sufficient to individuate them. The integrity of the fourfold structure is thus threatened either way. These problems suggest that there is an alternative logic underpinning the object/quality axis of the fourfold schema. The clue to this logic l ies in the way Harman attem pts to reinforce the distinction between the singularity of the object and the multiplicity of its qualities. In Guerrilla Metaphysics, he attempts to soften his conclusion that there really aren't many distinct qualities by explaining why there nevertheless appear to be: I hold that the individual thing is simply one, and that any plural­ ity it might have actually comes from its parts. not from its

[qualities]. The thing actually has only one [quality] , not many-it seems to have many only because it remains linked to its parts, which line it like handles or portholes. 181 Although, as we have seen, he subsequently rejects the idea that the plurality of a thing's qualities is merely apparent. he retains the idea that it is to be explained by appeal to the plurality of its parts: [W]hy are we dealing with multiplicities here at all? Why is it that a sensual tree has numerous different sensual qualities, and a real dog has numerous different real qualities? The answer, I propose, comes from the fact that any real or sensual object is made up of multiple pieces. When these pieces join together to form the object in question, the excessive properties of the parts that are not needed by the interaction are left over, as a sort of gas or aroma of qualities surrounding the object-an industrial byproduct of the process through which it was fabricated. The same holds in a different way for the relation between real objects and real qualities as well: for even if a real object is not attached to its multiple qualities in the same way as a sensual object is, those qualities need to be filtered through some real object to be available for possible use later on. 182 This explanation is evidently circular, insofar as it attempts to explain the fact that whole objects have many qualities by differentiating between the contributions of the many qualities of their component objects. Ignoring this circularity though, the persistence of the part/quality connection suggests that 181. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 229. 182. The Quadruple Object, 133. 151 0 c )> r _, -< )> z 0 I )> m 0 0 m _, -<

152 Harman's object/quality distinction is actually a sublimated form of the whole/part distinction. On the one hand, this ::;; Cl) z <( a:: w >­ Cl) ,.. ::;; _J <( 0 0 ::;; accounts for the d ubious mereological component of the argument from excess.183 On the other, it suggests that the divergence between the sensual and real domains is at least partially accounted for by transposing the distinction between subject and predicate onto different mereological models: the relation between a phenomenal unity and its various profiles,184 and that between a functional unity and its various compo­ nents.185 It is this logical juxtaposition that enables Harman to seem as if he is providing an analysis of property possession, or the relation between universal and i ndividual, without hav­ ing to address anything but relations between individuals, or even having to account for their individuation. This is more than simple agnosticism about the existence of u niversals.186 It is a deeper failure to acknowledge the metaphysical prob­ lems that theories of universals are attempting to solve. I l l . M O DA L M Y ST E R I A N I S M The third and final criticism of Harman's theory of qualities emerges from my earlier charge that the arg ument from execution resu lts in modal mysterianism.187 It is important to remember that this mysterianism doesn't consist in an evasion of the issue of modality, as we saw in the case of generality. 183. Chapter 2.1. subsection I I . 1 8 4 . This i s apparent in t h e above discussion o f elements. b u t i t also seems to inform the lines of thought regarding partial and complete knowledge running through the arguments from excess and identity. 185. See p. 83 n. 94. 186. Cf. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 153. 187. Chapter 2.1, subsection I.

We have already seen that Harman quite explicitly addresses 153 the topic of modality, at least insofar as the argument from execution aims to locate the g round of a thing's causal capacities in its withdrawn tool-being. The mysterianism lies in the fact that the argument merely emulates explanation , by providing a paradoxical characterisation of tool-being that performatively i nvokes some i neffable hidden essence, as opposed to anything like a concrete analysis of causal capacity. However, the modal tension between possibility and actuality at the heart of this characterisation evolves i nto a crucial feature of Harman's theory of qualities. Though it begins as the sti pulated equivalence between execution as a capac­ ity to act and as a capacity in action, wherein the various possible relations that are thereby actualised are neverthe­ less somehow extrinsic to the substances these capacities constitute, it develops into an insistence that substance must have a disti nct form of actuality that u nderpins the actu­ alisation of these relations. To quote the relevant passage from Tool-Being: If an entity always holds something in reserve beyond any of its relations, and if this reserve also cannot be located in any of these relations. then it must exist somewhere else. And since this reserve is what it is, quite apart from whatever might stumble into it. it is actual rather than potential. But it is not present -at hand , because I have shown that presence-at-hand turns out to be relational, against what is usually believed. 188 Harman appropriates the negative term 'vacuous actuality' from Whitehead to name this non-relational actuality of the 188. Tool-Being, 230. ;;:: 0 0 )> r ;;;: -< (/) --< m ;u :;; z (/) ;;;:

154 real/withdrawn in contrast to the relational actuality of the sensual/present. reinterpreting 'vacuous' as in vacuo, or 'apart ::; Cf) z <( 0:: w >­ Cf) >­ ::; _J <( D 0 ::; from any accidental collision with other objects'.189 In order to see the problem with the notion of vacuous actuality, we have to consider the antipathy to potentiality that motivates it in more detail. Harman unpacks his argument further elsewhere: [T]he concept of 'potential ' should be avoided wherever possible. To say that an acorn is a potential oak tree is clearly true, but the real question is this: what actual aspect of the acorn allows it to be potentially an oak tree? To talk about an object in terms of potential is really to view it from the outside, in terms of some future relations it might have, and this enables one to dodge the question of what the actuality of unexpressed qualities might be, here and now. 190 In parsing this argument we must be wary of the way that Harman maps the distinction between substance and relation onto that between the real and the sensual . Sensual qualities are distinguished from the real qualities that withdraw behind them by their relations to the objects that encounter them. As such , it might sound as if the 'future relations' referred to in this passage are of the same kind , and thus that Har­ man's insistence that real qualities are not potential is simply a consequence of the claim that they are not sensual. However, the difference between the acorn and the oak tree cannot be reduced to the novel relations to its environment that the latter has acquired through gestation. It is thus not a matter of 189. Ibid . . 228. 190. Towards Speculative Realism, 117.

whether real qualities should be characterised in terms of the 155 possible relations between objects they enable (e.g . , between the future oak tree and the soil it is planted i n ) , but whether they should be characterised by relations to possible states of affairs (e. g . , between the present acorn and its possible future as an oak tree) , including but not limited to relational states of affairs (e. g . , between the present acorn and the range of possible interactions between the future oak and its environment) . This suggests that the argument rests on a familiar worry about the circularity of causal explanations that appeal to dispositional properties-namely, that if properties are defi ned purely i n terms of their effects, then they cannot i nformatively explain the causal relations between the things which possess them and the effects they produce. This is exemplified by Moliere's philosopher, who explains that opium puts people to sleep because it possesses a 'dormative virtue'. Although this convincingly suggests that we should not entertain such brute dispositional properties ( i .e. , 'a propensity to .. . ) , it is not clear that this is the only possible link between ' quality and potentiality. This can be made apparent by way of another h istorical parallel: the debate between H u me and Kant regarding causal necessity. H ume's challenge is an epistemological one. He argues that causal inferences about the future are strictly u njustified , even if they are habitually u navoidable, because causal relations between actual states of affairs cannot be found in our experience in the same way as the states themselves. Kant's response to this argument is semantic. Rather than claim that causal connections are actually present in experience in a way H u me had missed, he argues that H u me's challenge relies u pon a demarcation between our understanding of the way things actually are and <:: 0 0 )> r <:: -< (/) _, m ;;o )> z (/) <::

1ss the way things could be that cannot be maintained. Brandom articulates this point very precisely: ::;: UJ z <( Q'. w f­ UJ >­ ::;: _J <( 0 0 ::;: Kant was struck by the fact that the essence of the Newtonian concept of mass is of something that, by law, force is both necessary and sufficient to accelerate. And he saw that all empirical concepts are like their refined descendants i n the mathematized natural sciences in this respect: their application implicitly involves counterfactual-supporting dispositional com­ mitments to what would happen if. Kant's claim, put in more contemporary terms, is that an i ntegral part of what one is committed to in applying any determinate concept in empirical circumstances is drawing a distinction between counterfactual differences in circumstances that would and those that would not affect the truth of the judgment one is making. One has not grasped the concept cat unless one knows that it would still be possible for the cat to be on the mat if the lighting had been slightly different. but not if all life on earth had been extinguished by an asteroid-strike. 191 The significance of Kant's claim that causation is a categorial feature of the structure of experience is that to recognise objects as the particular objects they are (e.g . , as cats, acorns. copper wires, etc.) i nvolves having some grasp of their par­ ticular causal capacities (e.g .. mobility, growth , conductivity, etc . ) . This is what it means to u nderstand the content of the relevant general concepts, or the essence of the correspond­ i ng properties. This does not mean that causal capacities and relations a re entirely transparent. Our beliefs about them can be as incorrect or incomplete as any of our other beliefs 191. Brandom. Between Saying and Doing. 97.

about objects. It is simply that we must have some beliefs 151 about these capacities in order to have any beliefs about objects at a l l . Put differently, one cannot even i ncorrectly believe that something is a cat without having some idea of what it is for something to be a cat and this means having at least some appreciation of what can, can't, and must be the case if this is so. We have already seen how Heidegger extends this Kantian insight, by showing how our theoretical understanding of such causal capacities is grounded in our practical understanding of the functional roles they play in possible action-what may, may not, and should be done with them.192 The problem with H u me's argument is that it depends upon the assumption that there is a primitive layer of experi­ ence that can be made intelligible without appeal to these sorts of modal notions. This is the toundationalism inherent in traditional empiricism-the idea that there is a level of description prior to all explanation, u pon which all explana­ tions are u ltimately founded . Crucially, the empiricists were tempted i nto this position by focusing upon sensible qualities (e.g . , redness, smoothness, solidity, etc.) as the exemplars of empirical properties, much as Harman does in his account of sensual qualities. As we have already seen, the problem with this narrow focus is that it encourages the view that we can u nderstand what it is to be red simply through immediate acquaintance with the sensation of redness. This supposed immediacy underwrites the assumption that seeing that some­ thing is red is to see something purely actual-Le., devoid of all relation to possibility and necessity-by obviating the need for modal relations to constitute the content of the seeing. 192. Chapter 2.1, subsection I . ;;:: 0 0 l> r ;;:: -< (/) _, m ;o i> z (/) ;;::

158 However, as Hegel impresses upon us in the ' Perception' sec­ tion of the Phenomenology of Spirit, even these seemingly 2 (/") z <( Q'. w f­ (/"J >2 _, <( 0 0 2 simple qualities are thoroughly mediated : understanding that an object is red involves u nderstanding that it is impossible for it to also be green, transparent, or without spatial extension. The modal relations of incompatibility between these properties are constitutive features of what they are.193 Empiricism is only able to ignore this point by exploiting a systematic ambiguity regarding whether the sensible qualities it focuses on belong to our sensations of objects (as qualia) or the objects themselves (as genuine properties) . Harman has rightly complained that empiricism tends to treat qualities as given prior to objects, and that this makes objects into mere bun­ dles of qualities that are subsequently unified theoretically. 194 In doing so, it treats these qualities as primarily features of sensation, and only derivatively as features of objects. This model of experience engenders modal scepticism by requiring that causal relations between objects be inferred from regulari­ ties in patterns of sensation that can be described without reference to these objects. If we are to reject this model , as Harman recommends, then we have to treat sensible qualities as essentially belonging to objects, but this means recognising the way our grasp of them is mediated by modal relations of incompatibility. This is because objects are essentially loci of such incompatibilities.195 What is precluded by the incompat­ ibility of two qualities is their possession by the same object (e.g . , a can be red and b can be green, but neither a nor b can 193. Brandom. Tales of the Mighty Dead. chapter 7. 194. The Quadruple Object, 23; Weird Realism, 29. 195. This point derives from a refinement of Hegel's ideas that Brandom de­ velops at length in Between Saying and Doing. chapter 6.

be both red and green) . The distinctness of two objects entails 159 that. all else being equal, the qualities one actually possesses do not constrain which qualities the other could possess in this way; but this makes no difference u nless they are not distinct from themselves. which is to say, u nless i ncompat­ ibilities between qualities do constrain which qualities they can possess. This means that a quality cannot belong to a specific object u nless that object is thereby precluded from possessing some other qualities. because the object's specificity consists in its i nability to possess i ncompatible qualities (i.e., it wouldn't be o's redness unless it precluded a from being green) . As such , we cannot treat qualities as genuinely belonging to objects u nless we treat them as having at least some incompatibility relations and thus as having a minimal modal content. Returning to the notion of vacuous actuality and the argument against potentiality that motivates it. we can now see that we are no better off explaining causation by means of qualities that are entirely non-relational than we are explaining it by means of qualities that are defined purely in relation to their effects. Let us consider the example of the acorn once more. It is clear that defining the quality which enables it to grow into an oak as a potentiality to do so is circular; but it is equally clear that describing it as an actuality that just is what it is (or a certai n je ne sais quoi) is entirely empty-quite literally vacuous. A genuine explanation of this capacity would describe the intervening stages of the process of germination and g rowth , and the differing roles that the acorn's compo­ nent parts play within it: by means of capacities for cellular division and differentiation, which would themselves have to be explained by means of capacities for DNA replication and modified gene expression . and so on. These capacities inhere in and constitute the relevant properties of the acorn and its ;::: 0 0 . )> r ;::: -< (/) --< m Al )> z (/) ;:::

160 components, from the distribution of and i nternal structure of its cells, to the specific molecular sequence of their DNA. :::; Cf) z <! °' w f­ C/) >­ :::; __J <! 0 0 :::; It might be claimed that although such an explanation is neither circular nor vacuous, it is nevertheless regressive, because it always leaves us seeking a further explanation for those capacities appealed to in the former explanation. How­ ever, this regress is entirely virtuous: u nderstanding is gained at each stage, and this is not mitigated by the fact that there is yet more to understand. To answer the question 'why won't this gas react with anything ? ' by saying ' because it is helium' is not the same as saying ' because it won't react with anything ' ; but neither i s i t a n answer for which further explanation cannot be demanded . To understand that helium atoms cannot form molecular bonds is to u nderstand something about what it is for them to be helium; but to understand why this is so involves looking into the what of electron shells and nuclei, for which there will inevitably be further whys. Our ability to describe objects as possessing certain qualities is i nseparable from our ability to use these descriptions in the ongoing process of explanation through which our understanding of these qualities is developed and refined . We can now see that, although he rejects the empiricist account of objects, Harman inadvertently perpetuates the problems of the empiricist account of qualities. Though Har­ man's metaphysical approach to causation and Hume's scepti­ cism are u ndoubtedly at odds, their shared focus on sensible qualities at the expense of empirical properties more generally leads them both to treat qualities as pure actualities that simply are what they are. Harman's approach is largely congruent with H ume's at the level of sensual qualities, in that it takes the causal capacities underlying the configurations of apparent qualities to be absent from experience. However, although he

qiverges from Hume by locating these capacities in a deeper 161 level of real qualities that can never be experienced , this turns out to be little more than a projection of the sensual level. As we saw in Harman's discussion of Ortega y Gasset , he treats real qualities almost as if they were sensual qualities that are merely inaccessible to us in principle, as qualia that reside in the private i nner worlds of the things themselves rather than in the sensoria of whatever encounters them. Both kinds of qualities are inscrutable haecceities that are simply individu­ ated in themselves, without either modal relations with other qualities or coinstantiation relations with other objects. The difference between them consists in the fact that sensual quali­ ties have an immediacy that the latter lack-we can assure ourselves that we see this shade, smell this scent, and taste this flavour, rather than that one. Real qualities are unknowable because we cannot hold them before our mind's eye in this way, but they remain as simple and primitive as their sensual kin. We are left with a cosmos populated with absolutely distinct yet entirely i ndistinguishable singularities-singular things with singular qualities-some that we can point to (and internally scream ' this is like this! ' ) , and some that we cannot ( because presumably, ' that is like that ' ) . I n t h e e n d , i t is a s if Harman thinks that objects are unitary, seamless refrigerators (real objects) , filled with a multiplicity of wonderful and potentially delicious flavours of ice cream that we can never taste ( real qualities) . We can spy their sheer variety behind the frosty glass, but not only can we never open the door, there is no door we could possibly open (withdrawa l ) . We are condemned t o choose between t h e flavours on display (sensual qualities) behind the snack counters (sensual objects) that litter the foyer of the great cinema of life (the glittering surface world ) , even while a further, mysterious selection ;;:: 0 0 l> r ;;:: -< (f) _, m ;u ';: z (f) ;;::

162 stands idling forever out of reach of the assorted pubescent attendants (the molten subterranean world ) . The only saving :::; rJJ z <I'. a:: w f­ (f) >­ :::; _J <I'. 0 0 :::; grace of this situation is that we can always hop the counter, force the attendant to one side, and press our tongues to the glass. hoping against hope to detect a fai nt trace of the afferent miasma emanating from the delights trapped within (allure) . Harman's picture reduces us to reality junkies, permanently debasing ourselves for one more tantalising lick of the real.196 In the end. OOP collapses into a kind of bizarre gastronomic mysticism. 1 9 6 . T h e situation is not dissimilar t o t h e predicament Russell describes i n relation t o Bergson: ' t h e reader is like t h e child w h o expects a sweet because i t h a s been told t o open i t s mouth a n d shut its eyes. Logic, mathematics. physics disappear in this philosophy, because they are too "static": what is real is an impulse and movement towards a goal which, like the rainbow, recedes as we advance, and makes every place different when we reach it from what it ap­ peared to be at a distance' (B. Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World [ London: Routledge Classics. 2009], 1 1 ) .

3. W H AT A R E R E LAT I O N S A N YWAY? 163 :;;: Perhaps the most noticeable effect that OOP has had u pon conte mporary metaphysical debates has been to bring renewed attention to the status of relations between enti­ ties.197 According to Harman. the battle lines dividing u p this conceptual terrain pit a contemporary relationist orthodoxy­ which dissolves objects into their relations with one another­ against his own su bstantialist heresy-which defends the independence of objects from all such relations. For Harman, correlationism is implicitly responsible for this orthodoxy to some extent by i nvariably making objects dependent u pon some vertical relations to subjects. He also identifies more explicitly metaphysical champions of relationism-split roughly between those he draws influence from (Whitehead. Latour. and DeLanda) and those he merely opposes ( Deleuze, Badiou, and Ladyman and Ross) -who make objects dependent upon some horizontal relations to one another. H owever. as we have already seen, the genesis of Harman's substantialism occurs i n his opposition to Heidegger. both as a reaction against Heidegger's identification of substance ( ousia) with presence (Anwesenheit) , and as a corrective to the putatively relational ontology of readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit) that Harman finds in his work .198 I ndeed . the two halves of Har­ man's notion of withdrawn substance can both be traced back to his appropriation of Heidegger's work on relations: the epistemic excess of objects over their presence is obtained 197. Cf. S. Shaviro 'The Actual Volcano'. in Bryant. Srnicek, and Harman (eds), The Speculative Turn, and Harman's ' Response to Shaviro' in the same volume. 198. Chapter 2.1. subsection I I . I )> _, )> ;u m ;u m r )> _, 0 z en )> z -< :;;: )> -< ...,

16� <'· >­ <( s >­ z <( CJ) z 0 f­ <( _J w 0:: w 0:: <( f­ <( I s by means of a general model d rawn from the account of intentional relations; and this excess is converted into their causal independence from one another by means of specific cases (synchronic dependence and diachronic affection) d rawn from the account of functional relations. Although we have already examined this genesis and its fiaws in detail. further consideration will reveal deeper problems with the manner in which Harman frames the overarching question regarding the metaphysics of relations. To begin with, it is important to understand that Heidegger does not present us with anything like a general theory of relations. He does provide an account of intentionality as a system of vertical relations between subjects (or Dasein ) a n d objects, a n d an account o f functionality as a system of horizontal relations between objects, locations, and functional roles; but neither of these is intended as an account of rela­ tions qua relations-they are species of relation, rather than the genus- nor is one meant to be analysed in terms of the other-functional relations are not a subspecies of intentional relation (or vice versa) . Of course, Harman is aware of this, and explicitly acknowledges that Heidegger would not coun­ tenance his universalisation of intentionality. Nevertheless, this does raise the question of why one might think intentionality is an adequate model not just for functional relations, but for relations per se. Moving beyond Harman's appropriation of Heidegger, the core motivation for this idea can be found i n t h e way he positions himself in relation t o Kant: We might summarize the philosophical position of Kant by saying that he makes two basic claims: 1) Human knowledge is finite, since the things-in-themselves can be thought but never known;

2) The human-world relation ( mediated by space, time, and the 165 categories) is philosophically privileged over every other sort of relation: philosophy is primarily about human access to the world, or at least must take this access as its starting point. Object-oriented philosophy agrees with the first Kantian point and disagrees with the second. while for speculative materialism it is precisely the reverse. For object-oriented philosophy, the things-in-themselves remain forever beyond our grasp. but not because of a specifically human failure to reach them. I nstead. relations in general fail to gasp their relata, and in this sense the ghostly things-in-themselves haunt inanimate causal relations no less than the human-world relation, which no longer stands at the center of philosophy. 199 What this shows is that Harman's u niversalisation of intention­ ality is motivated by a radical form of ontological humility. He takes it that to grant any sort of special metaphysical status to the human would be h ubristic, and that to restrict the provenance of i ntentional relations of knowing to humans is to do just this, regardless of whether they can be successful or not. It is a correspondingly radical form of epistemological humility that then denies the possibility of genuine knowledge of things, and thus, in collusion with its ontological counterpart, implies that all relations must be modelled as failed attempts to understand an object . Now, we might wonder precisely why the restriction of knowledge relations constitutes an illegitimate metaphysical privilege when the restriction of other types of relation does not (e.g . , not all objects are able to 'consume ', ' magnetize', or even perhaps ' marry' something else) . However, pursuing this 199. 'The Road to Objects', 171. ::;: I )> _, )> :u m :u m r :'."'.; Ci z (JJ )> z -< ::;: )> -< ..,,

155 question would mean probing the methodological relationship ('-. >­ <t than we have so far, and perhaps even asking why we should $'. >­ z <t (f) z 0 � _J w 0:: w 0:: <t f­ <t I $'. between epistemology and metaphysics in far greater depth treat epistemic relations as having any metaphysical status at all. This is a bigger can of worms than I care to open here. Nevertheless, there is more to be said about why Harman thinks knowledge (or intentionality more generally) is capable of providing an adequate model for other relations. According to modern logic, relations are a type of predicate. Predicates a re loosely defined as mathematical functions that take objects as arguments (e.g . , Fx) and return truth or falsity as values (e.g . , Fa returns true iff a is F and false otherwise) ,200 or as open sentences that require the addition of singular terms or quantified noun phrases i n order to form complete sentences (e.g . , ... is red ', ... is out of tune', ... knows · · · a good place to park his car', etc . ) . The examples just given are monadic predicates, which only have one argument place. These are usually taken to denote properties or qualities. How­ ever, predicates can easily have a different addicity, or number of argument places (e.g . , Fxy, ... is larger than .. .' ) . It is these · n-ary predicates that correspond to relations. This means we can have three-place relations such as ... is between ... and .. .', · which is true of something if it is located between two other things, and even eleven-place relations such as ... compose a · 200. In some interpretations (e.g. , possible world semantics) predicates do not directly return truth values, but return propositions which are themselves understood as functions from contexts (e.g. , possible worlds) to truth values. This is to account for the fact that non-mathematical propositions such as that expressed by 'the earth is the third planet from the sun' are true when evalu­ ated in ordinary contexts (e.g . . in talking about the actual world), but might be false if evaluated in a different context (e.g . . in a hypothetical discussion of a possible world in which the solar system formed differently) .

soccer team', which is true of some group of eleven people if 167 they are in fact members of the same soccer team . Moreover, two-place relations are usually characterised by their algebraic properties: as potentially reflexive (e.g . , if x is near to y, then x is near to x), transitive (e. g . , if x is larger than y, and y is larger than z, then x is larger than z ) . and symmetric (e. g . , if x is married to y then y is married to x ) . G iven that knowing is a two-place relation that is neither reflexive, transitive, nor symmetric, how is it supposed to provide a model for relations with different addicities or algebraic properties? The answer to this question is that Harman never really intended knowledge (or i ntentionality) to provide a model for these cases, because he uses the term 'relation' in an idiomatic fashion that doesn't include them . The scope of Harman's usage is made clear in the following passage: [ E ]lements are the basis of all relations, not just sentient ones. For not only is sentient perception object-oriented, bonded to fugitive objects in the night-but also inteiraction in general is saddled with this fate, and elements are the vehicle through which this destiny is enacted. 201 The crucial point to take away from this passage is that Harman treats 'all relations' and ' interaction i n genera l ' as synonyms. The scope of this idiomatic usage becomes more explicit later in the same book: We have said repeatedly that every relation immediately forms a new object. since every relation has a full inner life not exhaust­ ible by any outer perception of it. But this might be cause for 201 . Guerrilla Metaphysics, 169, my emphasis. :f I )> _, )> ;u m ;u m r )> _, 0 z (/) )> z -< :f )> -< ·0

168 confusion, since the word "relation" is generally used to describe the relation between two things that do not fuse together into a C'· >­ <( new object. The numerous keys and toothpicks lying before me >­ z <( (/) z 0 can obviously be said to relate to each other in a certain sense, s �_j w Q'. w Q'. <( f­ <( I s but we have been employing the term "relation" for a closer kind of fusion between parts that give birth to a new thing [ ... ] I nstead of saying that the various side-by-side elements of per­ ception are related, we will say instead that they are contiguous or adjacent. 202 That contiguity, which eventually becomes a full-blown cat­ egory (SO-SO) in Harman's ontography, is not a ' relation' in his sense of the word should make it clear that anything like locative relations (e.g . , x is to the left of y , x is earlier than y, etc.) and perhaps even comparative relations (e. g . , x is larger t h a n y , x is less important t h a n y , etc. ) are not 'relations' either, because they do not describe interactions between objects that can themselves be viewed as further objects.203 As already noted , the only relations that Harman deals with (as ' relations') are the specific cases he devel­ ops out of Heidegger's account of functionality: synchronic dependence (execution) and diachronic affection (causation), or the interactions through which entities persist and change, respectively. The reason these are at least prima facie suscep­ tible to analysis in i ntentional terms is that they share (or can be made out to share) the asymmetrical two-place structure 202. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 195. 203. Harman once suggested, during the Real Objects or Material Subjects conference at Dundee (2010). that comparative relations might be viewed as exclusively constituting sensual objects, but this was an off the cuff remark.

of intentional relations.204 One might be forgiven for thinking 169 that this is nothing but an issue of terminology. However, not only does Harman's peculiar sense of relation distort his presentation of the metaphysical debate between relationism and substantialism; it also generates blind spots in his thinking that warp his treatment of certain fundamental topics. The distortions engendered by Harman's terminology are ::;: I '.".i )> ::0 m ::0 m r )> _, Ci physics of networks is principally concerned with precisely the z en )> z -< sorts of synchronic dependence relations that Harman begins )> -< often masked by his choice of interlocutors. Latour's meta­ with , in virtue of its origin as an extension of his sociological methodology (Actor Network Theory [ANT]) for describing how certain relatively stable social systems function ; but it does not distinguish between these and other types of relations (e.g . , spatio-temporal configu ration) , precisely because Latour's avowed relationalism converts them into ersatz dependence relations (e.g . , by making a node's identity dependent upon its relative location within the network ) . This enables Harman to castigate Latour for rendering impossible the diachronic causal interactions through which networks are rearranged, while simultaneously leveraging his model of ersatz dependence to portray all other relations as if they were synchronic causal dependencies, and thus amenabl e to analysis in intentional terms. By contrast, Whitehead 's metaphysics of prehension already combines causal interaction and perception in a manner resembling Harman's intentional model , but it does not present this as an account of relationality per se.205 However, those 204. However, as pointed out in our discussion of the argument from inde­ pendence, that causal relations and intentional relations can both be portrayed as asymmetric does not mean that they can be portrayed as sharing the same direction (chapter 2.3, subsection I I ) . 205. This i s hardly surprising given Whitehead's contributions t o modern logic. ::;: ·<>

110 who take up Whitehead's banner when Harman assimilates his .,_ >­ < distinction. and thereby acquiesce to his framing of the issue.206 :;: >­ z < UJ z 0 !;;: _J w "' w "' < f­ < I :;: relationalism to Latour's are not always so precise in making this Though Harman's debate with Latour and Whitehead is not substantially affected by the conflation of interaction and rela­ tion that it tends to obfuscate, it nevertheless serves to distort his debate with Deleuze, Delanda, and Ladyman and Ross by presenting them as more similar to Latour and Whitehead than they in fact are. To demonstrate this point it is first necessary to rehearse the core complaint that Harman levels against relationism, namely, that it makes change impossible. As we hinted earlier, this complaint is prefigured in his engagement with Heidegger's supposed relationism in Tool-Being, which has two basic components: the claim that defining objects in terms of their relations i nevitably collapses into some form of holism, and the claim that this holism precludes change.207 Harman's argu­ ment is essentially that the indefinite ramification of functional dependence relations implied by their referential structure inevitably leads to a sort of functional saturation (a 'world­ machine') that leaves no room for functional disruption, and therefore reconfiguration or change. However. though the complaint against Latour a n d Whitehead is the same, the argument cannot be, because Latour's relationism isn't holist and Whitehead 's holism isn't functional. Harman thus needs a more robust argu ment to establish the conclusion that relationism implies stasis more generally. The argument he settles on approaches the same point-the inseparability of 206. Cf. Shaviro. 'The Actual Volcano', and 'The Universe of Things', <http:// www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Things.pdf> . 207. Chapter 2.1. subsection I .

an object's identity from its effects u pon other objects-from 111 two different angles.208 On the one hand, he argues that this prevents objects from instigating change, because they cannot be exhaustively constituted by their current effects and yet capable of novel future effects. On the other, he argues that it prevents objects from undergoing change, because if they were to produce novel effects then they would no longer be the same objects. The problem with this argument is that the characterisation of relationism on which it rests does not apply either to Deleuze and De Landa, or to Ladyman and Ross, albeit for different reasons. I . R E LAT I O N A L I TY A N D V I R T U A L I TY In the case of Deleuze and Delanda's process metaphysics, the problem with Harman's argument is that it characterises relationism as reducing individuals to their relations with one another. The reason this is problematic is that both thinkers distinguish between actual individuals and the virtual multi­ plicities that provide the conditions of their individuation, and it is the differential relations constitutive of the latter which they take to have something like an ontological priority over the individuals constitutive of the former.209 This is Deleuze 208. Prince of Networks, 186-7. 209. Cf. G . Deleuze. Difference and Repetition, tr. P. Patton ( New York: Colum­ bia University Press. 1994 ) . chapters 4-5; M . DeLanda. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy ( London: Continuum, 2002). chapters 1 -3. It is worth noting that the precise strength of this ontological priority is disputed by interpreters. For example, following Badiou (Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, tr. L. Burchill [ M inneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000]). Peter Hallward criticis­ es Deleuze for granting the virtual (qua unitary whole) a strong ontological priority over the actual individuals, or creatures, that emerge from it ( P. Hallward , O u t o f this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy o f Creation [ London: Verso, 2006]. chapter 3). By contrast, DeLanda's appropriation and development ;u m r l> -< 6 z l> r -< -< l> z 0 :s ;u -< c l> r =< -<

112 >­ r­ _J « ::J r°' and Delanda's way of articulating Gilbert Simondon's idea that individuals must be understood in terms of the ' pre-individual' factors underlying their genesis. Harman does try to engage with these ideas to some extent > 0 z « >­ r­ _J « z 0 r­ « _J w "' These positions try to enjoy the best of both worlds, defining a unified real m beneath experience that is not completely unified. I nstead of a total lump-world , it is one animated in advance by different 'pre-individual ' zones that prevent the world from being purely homogeneous. This position has the following supposed benefits: it prevents things from being overdetermined by their current actuality (an admirable object-oriented gesture), while also slyly bridging the gap between things without doing the required work (a merely ' radical ' move in the sense that must be rejected). For instance, Delanda wishes to establish the possibil­ ity of a 'continuous, yet heterogeneous space'. The same is true of Gilbert Simondon, that posthumous rising star. As Alberto Tos­ cano describes Simondon's position, 'whilst [preindividual being] is yet to be individuated, [it] can already be regarded as affected by relationality. This preindividual relationality, which takes place between heterogeneous dimensions, forces or energetic tenden­ cies, is nevertheless also a sort of non-relation [ ... ]. Being is thus said to be more-than-one to the extent that all of its potentials cannot be actualized at once'. Simondon like Delanda wants the world to be both heterogeneous and not yet parcelled out into of Deleuze's metaphysics seems to treat actual individuals (and the intensive processes that produce them) as distinct from but not inferior to the virtual multiplicities they incarnate (cf. his remarks on ' flat ontology' in Intensive Sci­ ence, 1 53-"1 ) . Regardless. it is clear that both Deleuze and Delanda wish to reject the total assimilation of pre-individual differential relations to rel ations between actual individuals that Harman advocates.

individuals. In this way, specific realities lead a sort of halfhearted 173 existence somewhere between one and many. 210 However, he does not actually consider the nature of ' preindi­ vidual relationality' and how the differential relations Deleuze and Delanda take to be constitutive of the virtual might differ from the 'relations', or rather, causal interactions, that he deals with exclusively. It is hard to do justice to this difference without providing a thorough survey of Deleuze's metaphysics (or its Delandian variant ) , but it suffices to point out that differential relations (e.g . , dx/dy) do not hold between i ndividuals, but variable quantities ( i . e . . x and y) . These variables may correspond to quantities of individuals (e.g . , populations of foxes and rabbits, as in Delanda's example of a predator-prey system) ,211 but they can equally correspond to velocities, spatial orientations, temperatu res, and the whole range of degrees of freedom characteristic of dynamic systems. Moreover, even in cases where they do correspond to quantities of individuals, they do not correspond to specific i ndividuals or groups thereof ( i .e . . the differential relation between number of foxes and number of rabbits captures a tendency governing the relative rates of change in population that applies across successive genera­ tions of foxes and rabbits, without care for which particular foxes and rabbits these are) . There is a legitimate metaphysical debate to be had about whether it makes sense to give this sort of relation ontological priority over individuals, but it is crucial to understand that this is precisely not the debate that Harman engages in: 210. Prince o f Networks, 188. 211 . Delanda, Intensive Science, 166-8. ;u m r l> ....; 0 z l> r ....; -< l> z 0 < ;u ....; c l> r::: ....; -<

17� An obvious question to raise is why the relations between real attractors that build up a multiplicity are any less problematic >- >::: _J <( :::J >-"' > 0 z <( >­ >-­ :::; <( z 0 � _J w "' than the relation between the real and the actual, or between two actual things. If no actual trajectory ever does justice to its underlying attractors, it should also be the case that no real multiplicity ever does justice to its own real components. In both cases it is a matter of relations, and relations are simply unable to exhaust their terms. 212 This passage is little more than an attempt to sidestep the broader debate regarding the metaphysics of relations by converting it back i nto his preferred terms, or by portray­ ing his own concern with ' relations' as more fundamental. It does this by treating the attractors (or singularities) that populate the vector field (or multiplicity) which is generated by the relevant differential relations as individuals that can be u nproblematically separated from these relations, as if they were discrete components out of which the vector field was constructed , rather than topologically invariant features of a continuous curve.213 This doesn't just presume what it means to establish-that description i n terms of individuals is more fundamental than descriptions in terms of relations-it does 212. Towards Speculative Realism. 178. 213. I n dynamic systems theory, a system is represented by a phase space whose dimensions correspond to its degrees of freedom (the system's vari­ ables) . If a system has three dimensions [><. y, z]. then its vector field is a manifold whose curvature is determined by the differential relations between their variables [ dx/dy, dx/dz. dy/dz]. and its attractors are the topologically invariant features of this curvature (e.g .. cycles, saddles, points, etc.). For a more thorough overview of these ideas. consult Delanda, Intensive Science (chapter 1 ) . or Ian Stewart. Does God Play Dice: The Mathematics of Chaos ( London: Penguin. 1g89 ) .

so by completely misrepresenting the logic of the mathemati­ 175 cal structures in question . Although Harman successfully avoids engaging Deleuze and Delanda on their own terrain by obfuscating the extent of the difference between their relationism and that of Latour and Whitehead, the argument he deployed against the latter still lacks purchase upon them, not least because their avowed endorsement of the idea that 'relations are external to their terms' clashes with the characterisation of relationism upon which his arg ument turns.214 H e compensates for this by repurposing the strategy he deployed against H eidegger-he emphasizes the opposition between the continuum of virtual multiplicities (what Deleuze calls 'the plane of immanence/ consistency' ) and the discreteness of actual individuals, and substitutes it for that between the real absorption of the world-machine and the apparent distinctness of its parts: We find then that Delanda's actual world is made up of sterile nodules unable to affect one another or to relate in any way, while the non-actual zone of reality has no difficulty forming relations at all. There everything bleeds together in a continuum [ ... ] and the fact that it was woven together from initial hetero­ geneity does not prevent it from being a single continuum. 215 It is possible to take issue with Harman's characterisation of Delanda's account of individuality here. Delanda does hold that there is a sort of quasi-causality operating at the virtual 214. Cf. G . Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjecitivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature. tr. C. V. Boundas ( New York: Columbia University Press. 2001 ) ; M. Delanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity ( London and New York: Continuum, 201 1 ) . 2 1 5 . Towards Speculative Realism, 1 77-8. OJ m r )> -l 0 z )> r =< -< )> z 0 < OJ -l c )> r -l -<

116 >­ \-::J -0: ::i \-"' > 0 z -0: >­ \-::J -0: z 0 1-­ -0: _J U.J Ct: level that is responsible for the genesis of actual individuals and their behaviour, but he does not for all that deny that this behaviour is causal. It is perhaps better to look at this as a case of Harman putting the cart before the horse-his repur­ posed strategy is to show that the impossibility of change is an unintended consequence of Deleuze and Delanda's holism. The idea thus seems to be that, if causal interactions between actua l ind ividuals emerge from their mutual envelopment within a virtual continuum, then it is sufficient to attack this envelopment to u ndermine causality and thereby the pos­ sibility of change. H owever, it is not so easy to reconstruct precisely how Harman's attack on the virtual is supposed to work-although it is clearly directed at the claim that the virtual is both continu­ ous and heterogeneous, it is less clear why this is a problem. The most i n-depth presentation of this objection is to be fou nd embedded in the narrative of Harman's Circus Philosophicus, during a fictional exchange between Harman and his erstwhile Deleuzian paramour, in which he recounts a d ream wherein various famous metaphysical holists are punished for their intellectual errors by being submerged in a lake of molten lead . At the end of this exchange, he engages his interlocutor's Deleuzian holism explicitly: [Y]ou do not claim that the world is simply a united whole, as the full-blown thinkers of apeiron do. Rather, you contend that the world is both one and many at the same time. Any given object is already interwoven with all others in a sort of continuum. Whatever happens in the world does not result from contact between one individual entity and another. but happens at the level of a united apeiron, though you hedge your bets by calling it both heterogeneous and continuous. Since I am not fully myself,

and the shark and tree also not fully themselves, we are all laced 177 with difference. No causal relation exists at the level of individual things: such individuals are not really cut off from each other in the first place. But the pernicious consequence is that the same thing will be simultaneously 'a battleship, a wall , and a human being,' in Aristotle's memorable phrase [ ... ] [Y]ou always respond that the various individual things are not just 'potentially' distinct. but 'virtually' so. Yet here is the problem. Either the various beings dissolved in the lake of lead remain distinct, or they do not. If not then we have monism, and there is no reason that different ;a m r � 0 z )> c:: _, -< )> z 0 ::: ;a _, c )> r =< -< entities would ever emerge from it. But if they do remain distinct, then there is the rather different problem of knowing why they are more than merely one. For how is the virtual shark different from the virtual tree? You want them to be a continuum. but this is a step that Aristotle knew could not be taken . 216 The argument put forward in this monologue is essentially that individuals cannot be enveloped i n a virtual continuum without ceasing to be distinct individuals, and that the specific relations of mutual envelopment (e.g . , between populations of foxes and rabbits in a particular ecosystem) that are supposed to enable specific causal interactions between them (e.g . , a particular fox eating a particular rabbit) are impossible without distinct relata . The problem with this argument is perhaps best encapsu­ lated by Harman's complaint that the virtual 'merely plays the double game of saying that true reality in the u niverse is both connected and separate, both continuous and heterogene­ ous'.217 What this shows is that Harman equates heterogeneity 216. Circus Philosophicus (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010), 23-'1. 217. Prince of Networks, 187.

11s >- '::: __J <( ::J f-0:: > 0 z <( >­ f-­ __J <( z 0 f-­ <( __J LU 0:: with separation (or discreteness) and thereby takes the very idea of 'continuous heterogeneity' to be internally inconsistent ( i .e . , as tantamount to 'continuous discreteness') . This supposed i nconsistency is presumably why the arg ument against the heterogeneity of the virtual is so rarely articu­ lated . Nevertheless, this supposition plays a crucial role in the above argument. because it not only blurs the lines between discreteness. heterogeneity, and difference, but also confuses continuity, homogeneity, and identity. It is this latter confusion that enables Harman to argue that the mutual envelopment of distinct individuals within the same continuum inevitably results in them becoming identical . The irony looming behind this assumption is that Deleuze's Difference and Repetition-the key text for his metaphysics and Delanda's appropriation of it-is best described as an attempt to articulate an account of difference that is not subordinated to the opposition between identity and distinctness, and thus to provide a consistent account of heterogeneous continuity. Moreover, the heart of this project is his interpretation of the significance of differential calculus, and the differential relations it describes. There is much to be said about this, but it is sufficient to observe that mathematical curves present the exemplary case of continu­ ous heterogeneity, or difference that is not understood in terms of some prior discreteness. This is because they are not princi­ pally composed of distinct lines or infinitesimal points that differ from one another in their direction or position. but are first and foremost continuous lines that exhibit an equally continuous change i n g radient.218 Although it can be differentiated to 218. It is worth remembering that a line is just a one-dimensional surface, and that the vector field/virtual multiplicity is an n-dimensional surface whose cur­ vature is determined by differential relations between many variables.

determine the g radient of a tangent to any arbitrary point 179 along its length (x/y ) , this heterogeneous continuity can be exhaustively captured by a single differential relation (dx/d y ) . This is what i t means t o say that t h e difference (as captured by the differential relation) is internal to the curve. rather than a relation it bears to another line. It is important to emphasize that this does not necessarily establish the metaphysical applicabil ­ ity o f the concept o f continuous heterogeneity, let alone the consistency of Deleuze's account of the virtua! as a whole. It simply shows that the concept is prima facie consistent. and cannot be simply dismissed without engaging in precisely the sorts of metaphysical debates that Harman sidesteps. Of course. this does not constitute a complete response to Harman's worries about the relation between the virtual and the actual i ndividuals that are enveloped i n it . Such a response is not really possible without delving much deeper into Deleuze and Delanda's projects than would be appropriate in the current context. It is no easy matter to outline how every variable characteristic of every physical system in the universe could in principle be i ncorporated as dimensions of a single continuum which would thereby informationally encode the complete actual state of those systems along with their virtual tendencies, let alone how this continuum can stil l be divided into discrete chunks corresponding to individual systems and their specific tendencies.219 Nevertheless, it is worth making a final point about the relation between this form of holism and the possibility of change, given the general thrust of Harman's attack on relationism. It is important to see that whether we 219. See my paper 'Ariadne's Thread: Temporality, Modality, and Individu­ ation in Deleuze's Metaphysics' ( <http://deontologistics.files.wordpress. com/2011/03/deleuze-mmu.pdf>) for an attempt at an outline. ::0 m r )> _, 6 z )> r ::::; -< )> z 0 :s ::0 _, c )> r _, -<

1so w a:: :J f­ () :J a:: f­ {f) 0 z <( >­ f­ _J <( z 0 !;;: _J w a:: consider i ndividual physical systems, or the totality of all such systems, the differential relations which constitute their virtual multiplicities essentially encode information about the way they change over time. They cannot be considered in isolation from change, even if they can be considered i n isolation from the causal interactions between specific individuals that are involved in these changes. Harman might respond that these systems are executing a pattern through which they persist as the systems that they are, but that this does not thereby account for the possibility that this pattern could become otherwise. However, although there is something to be said about complicating the typology of change, one can only keep separate the two types of change this objection is predicated u pon by framing them in functional terms (i.e., as either acting towards or against the system's end ) ; the advantage of the dynamic systems approach that Deleuze and Delanda adopt is precisely that it is capable of capturing complex behaviours without appealing to these terms ( i .e., by means of the math­ ematics of attractors in phase spaces) .220 I I . R E LAT I O N A L I TY A N D ST R U CT U R E I n the case of Ladyman and Ross's ontic structural realism, the problem with Harman's argument is twofold. On the one hand, it characterises relationism as being concerned with specifically causal relations (albeit synchronic ones), so as to undermine the notion of causation more generally ( by preclud­ ing diachronic ones); on the other, it characterises relationism as treating individuals as dependent u pon al/ such relations. 220. It is worth noting that catastrophe theory was developed to provide mathematical tools to study precisely the sorts of changes that this objection takes to be outside of the scope of the dynamic systems approach .

It is quite easy to see the error u nderlying the first problem: 181 the sorts of mathematical structure that Ladyman and Ross take to be realised in the physical structure to which they g ive ontological priority i nvolve the whole range of types of relations alluded to earlier. For instance. the phase space descriptions of physical systems at the heart of Deleuze and DeLanda's metaphysics discussed in the last subsection are merely one example · of such structures, and as we've seen, the differential relations between variables these involve sim­ ply aren't causal relations in Harman's sense. Furthermore, Ladyman and Ross examine the mathematical structures of systems described i n the frameworks of both quantum mechanics and general relativity i n some depth, i n order to argue that they need not presuppose (and indeed , tell against) pre-individuated relata .221 We need not even assess the validity of these arguments in order to point out that the mathemati­ cal structures in question are composed of relations whose logical features are completely different from those of Har­ man's ' relations'. This is aptly demonstrated by the following passage, in which they distinguish relative and weak forms of discernibility from the absolute form demanded by thorough­ going substantialism: Two objects are 'relatively discernible' just in case there is a for­ mula in two free variables which applies to them in one order only. Moments in time are relatively discernible since any two always satisfy the 'earlier than' relation in one order only. An example of mathematical objects which are not absolutely indiscernible but are relatively discernible include points of a one-dimensional 221. J. Ladyman and D. Ross, Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Natural­ ized (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007), §§3.1 -3.2. ;o m r l> -i 6 z l> r -i -< l> z 0 (/) -i ;o c 0 -i c ;o m

182 space with an ordering relation, since, for any such pair of points x and y, if they are not the same point then either x > y or x < y w Cl'. ::J f­ u ::J Cl'. f­ (/) 0 z <! >­ f­ _J <! z 0 f­ <t _J w Cl'. but not both. Finally, two objects are 'weakly discernible' just in case there is two-place irreflexive relation that they satisfy [ ... ] Clearly, fermions in entangled states like the singlet state violate both absolute and relative discernibility, but they satisfy weak discernibility since there is an irreflexive two-place relation which applies to them, namely, the relation 'is opposite spin to'. 222 This should be enough to establish that any genuine debate with ontic structural realism over the ontological priority of relations must explicitly concern itself with the sorts of locative and comparative relations (e. g . , 'earlier than' and 'is opposite spin to', respectively) that Harman's framing of the issue ignores. When it comes to the idea that relation ism reduces an indi­ vidual to the totality of its relations, the problem is somewhat more complex. On the one hand, it is easy to show that this is not Ladyman and Ross's position: at worst. they reduce the individuals posited by the mathematical descriptions of physical structures to the specific relations that are involved in those descriptions-which is to say, to those that are considered scientifically relevant to capturing the phenomena in question . This means that any argument against relationism that proceeds by exploiting the apparent absurdity of an object's identity depending u pon seeminglv irrelevant relations to other things (e.g . , the g ravitational i nteraction between Mars and my shoe) cannot get off the ground here. On the other hand, the manner in which Harman exploits this misunderstanding in his criticism of ontic structural realism exemplifies his persistent conflation 222. Ibid. , 137.

of epistemological and metaphysical issues under the heading 1s3 of 'relations'. I do not aim to assess all of Harman's criticisms of Ladyman and Ross's position, some of which I am highly sympathetic to.223 I will instead restrict myself to commenting on the objection contai ned i n the following passage: A pattern, for these authors. is a bundle of relations no less than a bundle of qualities. The reasonable objection that there can be no relations without relata is quickly d ismissed by the authors as an old-fashioned gimmick, in the eye-rolling spirit of ' here we go again'. And yet they must tacitly concede that our knowledge of specific subject matter is never exhaustive at any given moment ; science changes and advances. For this difference between representational and extrarepresentational real patterns is the key to their whole position, since it is all that allows them to maintain realism against an idealism that would hold that whatever science thinks at any given moment is always true. Our knowledge of the planet Neptune is surely incomplete, and hence our current mathematization of that planet is at best a translation of the real pattern Neptune itself. even if it were granted that certain mathematical aspects of our current translation will survive into any future understanding of it. I n short, the real pattern Neptune is something more than our or anyone else's relation to it. This means that they already accept a distinction between relation and relata at one level, at least. But as soon as representation is taken out of the picture 223. In particular. I think he is entirely right to criticise their refusal to account for the difference between mathematical and physical structure (Every Thing Must Go. §3.6 ) . I am even willing to admit that there is something untoward about the manner in which they aim to derive metaphysical conclusions from epistemological premises, but this is of a piece with Harman's own methodo­ logical problems. rather than something his criticisms identify. XJ m r )> --l 6 z )> r --l -< )> z 0 (/) --l XJ c (') --l c XJ m

and we move to the realm beyond representation, we suppos­ 184 edly find that Neptune belongs to a giant relational structure w 0:: ::i f­ (.) ::i 0:: f­ rn 0 z <( >­ f­ _J <( z Q f­ <( _J w 0:: rather than being a discrete individual. I n other words, although Neptune cannot be dissolved into observers' current relations with it. Neptune itself is supposedly dissolved into the relational structure of the world, having no status as an individual except when viewed by an observer from a specific scale. 224 In order to see what is going on in this paragraph, it is neces­ sary to understand that although ontic structural realism is a metaphysical position, the motivation for it is epistemological. It is meant to solve the problem of how successive scientific theories can be understood as presenting incrementally better descriptions of the same real phenomena even while the indi­ vidual entities they purport to refer to differ (e.g . . the phlogiston and oxygen theories of combustion) . It does this by holding that there are strictly no i ndividual entities to be referred to, only physical structures to be mathematically modelled, and that successive theories can preserve mathematical structure that successfully represents this physical structure through isomorphism despite permutations of reference.225 What Har­ man does in the above passage is to posit a tension between Ladyman and Ross's epistemological realism and the meta­ physical relationism it motivates. by suggesting that whereas the former demands that the thing modelled is independent of the model qua mathematical structure, the latter makes the thing dependent u pon the model by i ncorporating the representational relation within the thing qua physical structure. 224 . ' I am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed'. 786-7. 225. Ladyman and Ross. Every Thing Must Go. chapter 2.

It is important to understand why this objection doesn't sur - 1s5 vive the restriction of physical structure to relevant relations. For instance, the example of quantum mechanical systems might incline us to think that our observational relations to systems are relevant to understanding their behaviour, and so must be incorporated in our models of them, and thus, presu mably, i n the physical struct u res modelled thereby. However, this i nclination misunderstands these relations in at least two ways. Firstly, not only does it erroneously infer that the need for a general model of observational effects u pon a system (e.g . , the system involved in the double-slit experiment) implies that the system's identity is dependent u pon particular observation relations ( i . e . , that it is a d if­ ferent system when observed by me than when observed by you , or not observed at a l l ) ; it illegitimately extends this dependence beyond those systems for which observational effects are relevant. Secondly, and perhaps more damagingly, it ignores the difference between observation and modelling: it treats the representational relation between mathematical model and physical structure as equivalent to the perceptual relation between an observer and what they observe. This is important . because even though quantum mechanics must account for the general effects of observing a system within the models it bases on these observations, there is no addi­ tional need for it to account for the effects of its models upon the systems they model .226 U ltimately, what this reveals is that the tension between epistemology and metaphysics that Harman locates in antic 226. There is a case to be made that this sort of reflexivity occurs in certain areas of social science, such as economics. insofar as th e availability of models of our own behaviour can lead to both self-fulfilling and self-refuting prophesy. However. these cases are hardly representative. ;a rn ' )> _, 0 z )> c _, -< )> z 0 en _, ;a c 0 _, c ;a rn

1s6 structural realism is based upon the same logic underlying the conflation of intentional and causal relations we addressed as w 0:: :J f0 :J 0:: f­ [j) 0 z <! >­ f­ _J <! z 0 f­ <l'. _J w 0:: the argu ment from independence.227 However, we are now in a position to examine this logic in more depth, and to show how Harman's way of discussing ' relations' disguises it. As we saw in the last chapter, the account of representation at the heart of Harman's theory of intentional relations takes percep­ tion as its model. and this undermines its ability to account for the differences between observation and modelling in empirical i nvestigation . Moreover, we saw that the central feature of this model is Harman's refusal to properly distin­ guish between perception and inference, or between what is directly given in observation and what is indirectly inferred from it. We are now in a position to recognise that this refusal to d istinguish between perception and inference is crucial to maintaining the conflation between causal and i ntentional relations, because perceiving an object involves being both causally and intentionally related to that object ( i . e . , sensing and representing it) , whereas inferring something about it does not ( i . e . , representing it without sensing) . This exclusion of inference facilitates the non sequitur underlying the argument from independence. by allowing Harman to elide the difference between representational and causal success, but it equally u nderwrites the above objection against Ladyman and Ross, by giving the i mpression that mathematical models must be somehow causally enmeshed with the physical structures that they model . Once more, it is Harman's choice of Latour as an interlocutor (and as an authority on the scientific enterprise) that works to d isguise the assu mptions a bout rep resentation 227. Chapter 2.3, subsection II.

that motivate his arguments.228 His use of Latour's notion of 187 'translation' in setting up the Neptune example is illustrative, because it enacts a sort of anthropological bracketing that dissolves the differences between epistemic activities such as perceptual observation and inferential modelling. Through this lens, the whole process of i nteracting with phenomena through observation and experiment . analysing the resultant data, constructing theoretical models, and elaborating their consequences, is collapsed into a single operation of translating those phenomena into theories. 229 However, Harman is not just exploiting the epistemological homogeneity of translation here, but also Latour's account of the 'networks' these translations compose. For example. Latou r famously sees neutrons as essentially bound u p in a network of relations that includes all the various elements of the h istorical process through which Joliot made them available as an object of technological manipulation and political action.230 This process of translating between neutrons and politics constitutes a particular relation between neutrons and politics in which Joliot is the media­ tor-that is to say, a relation in which ' neutrons' and ' politics' are viewed as individuals i n the same sense as is Joliot. This is i n distinct contrast to the general relations that physics concerns itself with modelling, such as the relation between neutrons and protons viewed as general kinds. Through this lens, the metaphysical difference between individuals and general kinds is collapsed and subsumed into the function of network-node-a node in a network of slapdash references 228. Cf. R . Brassier, 'Concepts and Objects', in Bryant, Srnicek and Harman (eds), The Speculative Turn. 229. Cf. Prince of Networks, chapter 1 , §A. 230. Ibid . , 73-5. ;;a m r '.'.< 0 z )> r � -< )> z 0 (/) _, ;;a c 0 _, c ;;a m

188 w :::; f0 z <( w 0 <( o_ (j) deployed in anthropological descriptions of scientific practice. as opposed to those deployed in scientific explanation itself.231 This metaphysical homogeneity of networks combines with the epistemological homogeneity of translation to obscure the difference between the representational relations involved in observing individual systems and modelling their general behaviour. Once we see past these Latourian distortions. the supposed tension between the epistemological and metaphysi­ cal sides of Ladyman and Ross's relationism disappears. I l l . S PAC E A N D T I M E Now. we have already managed to locate a number of meta­ physical blind spots in Harman's theory by tracing his peculiar usage of the term ' relation' through a number of different debates with other thinkers. but there is one particular blind spot that deserves special attention. both because it is so extreme and because it proves so central to his system as a whole. I did not mince my words when I described Harman's theory of qualities as a 'conceptual disaster'. but I must be blunter still when it comes to his theory of space and time: it is in my opinion the most catastrophically inept aspect of his metaphysical system . This u napologetically harsh judgement is motivated by Harman's persistent inability to engage with the topic of spatio-temporal relations. on the one hand, and his consequent failure to thematise the essentially temporal basis of his theory of objects on the other. The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to examining these problems and their consequences. 231 . Harman's failure to notice the elision of generality on Latour's part is hardly surprising given his own track record on the matter (see chapter 3.2, subsection I I ) .

It is worth remi nding ourselves of what Harman thinks about 1ag space and time before exploring why it is problematic. In The Quadruple Object, Harman introduces the topic by q uery­ ing why space and time are simultaneously bound together and separated from other metaphysical structures in most philosophical speculation (e.g . , Kant's division between space and time as pure forms of intuition and the categories as pure concepts of the understanding) .232 He goes on to argue that. in fact , space and time should be counted alongside essence and eidos as two of the four fundamental tensions implied by the fourfold split between the sensual, the real , objects, and qualities, and against the three radiations and three junctions that make up the remainder of the ten ontographic catego­ ries it demands.233 What distinguishes these fou r tensions is that they are object-quality relations, as opposed to the quality-quality relations of the radiations and the object-object relations of the junctions. What distinguishes space and time from essence and eidos is that they involve sensual qualities: space consists in the tension between real objects and their sensual qualities ( RO-SQ) , and time consists in the tension between sensual objects and their sensual qualities (SO-SQ) . What this means is that they delimit the bounds of experience (or vicarious relation): time enables relations of confrontation (time-fission) between real objects and the sensual facades that populate their experience, and space enables relations of allure (space-fusion) between them and their real coun­ terparts hiding behind those facades. By contrast , the other tensions individuate these objects and their facades (the vicarious relata): eidos (SO- RQ) constitutes the identity of 232. The Quadruple Object, 99. 233. Chapter 1.2; see the diagram on p. 19. (f) -0 )> () m )> z 0 _, � m

190 w ::;;; >= 0 z <( w 0 <( o._ UJ a facade across variations within experience, and essence ( RO-RQ) constitutes the identity of a hidden object between appearances in other objects' experience; these enable the remaining i ntra-experiential relation of theory (eidos-fission) wherein the real object moves from confronting an individu­ ated facade to tracing the eidetic anchor that ties its indi­ viduation to an already i ndividuated h idden object. and the sole extra-experiential relation of causation (essence-fusion) wherein a hidden object moves from alluding to its own depths through its facade's features to allowing its own features to modify the encountering object. There are two points that we should take away from the above rehearsal of Harman's categorial schema. Firstly, with an eye to Harman's use of the term 'relation', it is now clear that although the tensions are the conditions under which certain complicated ranges of interaction occur (time: confrontation­ theory and space: allure-causation) , they are not themselves interactions, and thus not ' relations' in Harman's sense of the word . This is hardly surprising given his insistence that contigu­ ity (SO-SO) and withdrawal ( RO- RO) are not 'relations' either, despite their categorial status being discussed in the same putatively relational terms. Secondly, and more importantly, it is now equally clear how important the difference is between the three intra-experiential relations (confrontation, theory, and allure) and the extra-experiential one (causation ) . Although space remains a condition of causation i nsofar as causation proceeds via allure, it is not clear that the same holds for time. Even if allure must itself proceed via confrontation , and thus causation via confrontation , this would still grant space a prior­ ity with regard to causation that should be cause for concern. If we are to address the first of these points, it is important to explain what precisely it means to say that there is a 'tension'

between an object and its sensual qualities. This is stated most 191 concisely during the introduction of the concept of time in The Quadruple Object: When we speak of time i n the everyday sense. what we are referring to is a remarkable interplay of stability and change. In time, the objects of sense do not seem motionless and fixed , but are displayed as encrusted with shifting features. Nonetheless, experience does not decay in each instant into an untethered kaleidoscope of discontinuous sensations; instead, there seem to be sensual objects of greater or lesser durability. Time is the name for this tension between sensual objects and their sensual qualities. 234 It is clear from this passage that the tension proper to time consists in the fact that an intentional relation to a sensual object persists across variations i n its sensual qualities. Har man has addressed these sorts of phenomenal shifts in his discussion of H usserl's notion of perceptual adumbration and the corresponding method of eidetic variation, wherein we encounter the same object from differing perspectives, be it really or imaginatively. The question is then whether the tension proper to space consists in a similar sort of variation. This is addressed further on in the same passage: When we speak instead of space, everyone will recall the old quarrel between Leibniz and Clarke over whether space is an absolute container or simply a matter of relations between things. But in fact it is neither: for space is not just the site of relation. but rather of relation and non-relation. Sitting at the moment in Cairo, 234 . The Quadruple Object, 100. (/) -,, }> 0 m }> z 0 :::< ;;:: m

192 I am not entirely without relation to the Japanese city of Osaka, since in principle I could travel there on any given day. But this w :2' r0 z <( w u <( 0.. CJ) relation can never be total, since I do not currently touch the city, and even when I travel to stand in the exact center of Osaka I will not exhaust its reality [ ... ] This interplay of relation and non-relation is precisely what we mean when we speak of space ( ... ] . 235 This ' i nterplay of relation and non-relation' consists in the fact that a real object persists across variations in which other objects are i ntentionally related to it by way of its sensual facades. The role of sensual qualities consists in the fact that. although a sensual facade can persist across minor variation in its qualities, there are major variations that it cannot persist across. Given that the intentional relation between two real objects cannot persist without the sensual object that medi­ ates between them. these major variations are capable of altering the overall distribution of intentional relations between objects. As such , for Harman, space and time are not 'relations' because they are the conditions under which the connections between objects are created, maintained. and dissolved by eddies in the sensual ether that supports them. The problem with this account is that it says nothing about specifically spatio-temporal relations (e.g .. x is to the left of y, x has the same orientation as y, x happened before y , x had the same duration as y , etc.) , because these are precisely the sorts of relation that Harman's idiom excludes. However. the situation is much worse than this. The above passage displays the point at which Harman's idiom moves from simply exclud­ ing types of relations to actively conflating them. This is his 235. I b i d .

i nvocation of the debate between Leibniz and Clarke, and 193 subsequent framing of the spatio-temporal relations Leibniz is talking about as 'relations' or interactions. This mistake is repeated elsewhere with more explicitly absurd consequences: It would be mistaken to follow Leibniz literally and say that space is simply generated by the relations between things. For it is just as true that space is the site of non-relation between things. If space were simply made up of relations, we would have a systematic gridwork with each object utterly defined by its relations with all the others, and the universe would become a single lump interrelated to the point of homogeneity. Such a lump provides no room for anything like space. which by definition would contain only one position: that of the lump as a whole. 236 This caricature of Lei bniz's position is perhaps a result of confusing the idea that space and time are epiphenomena/­ spatio-temporal relations can be derived from the non-spa­ tio-temporal properties of monads-and the idea that each monad mirrors every other-the non-spatio-temporal prop­ erties of every monad can be derived from any monad . The result is the same crude accusation of radical holism Harman levels at Heidegger, Whitehead . and Deleuze. among others. The core of the debate between Leibniz and Clarke is whether we need to meta physically distinguish between locations in space ( i .e .. the regions and points of space viewed as a coordinate system) and their occupants (i.e . . the events, pro­ cesses, and seemingly persistent objects that can be located within this coordi nate system) . Following Newton, Clarke held that this distinction is necessary to make sense of the 236. Towards Speculative Realism. 161-2. (/) "O )> () m )> z 0 .., ;;:: m

194 mechanics of motion, and that these independently subsisting locations are part of an absolute space. By contrast. Leibniz UJ ::> f0 z <( UJ u <( o._ CJ) held that this distinction is unnecessary, because the relations between locations out of which fixed coordinate systems are composed (e.g . , in space [x. y, z ) , point <1. 2. 3> is located at -3 along the x axis from point <4. 2. 3 > ) are abstracted from spatio-temporal relations between objects (e.g . , my table is to the left of my chair, which is to the right of my bed , and so on) and thus needn't presuppose an absolute space. The debate is very complex, and becomes even more so when it is extended to the advances in physics beyond Newtonian mechanics, and the contentious question of how to u nite the differing conceptions of space presupposed by quantum mechanics and general relativity.237 However, we needn't resolve this debate to see that Har­ man's discussion of 'space' and 'relations' is at best entirely irrelevant to it, and at worst actively misrepresents it. That Harman is not in Osaka but can potentially travel to Osaka is not a 'non-relation' is Leibniz's sense, but a spatio-temporal relation that could be described in a variety of different coordinate systems abstracted from their spatio-temporal relations to their peers (e.g . , by means of a three-dimensional planetary map that can account for distance through the earth, by means of latitude and longitude over the earth's surface, or by means of a network graph that restricts the available paths between the two nodes even further, etc . ) . Moreover. even if we decide that these various coordi nate systems are pale reflections of an absolute coordinate system within which everything can be located , we still need not concede that the ability to specify unique spatio-temporal relations between everything 237. Cf. Ladyman and Ross. Every Thing Must Go. §3.2.

thereby makes them indiscernible, because it does precisely 195 the opposite-it makes them absolutely discernible. One might nevertheless want to champion Harman's account of space against the idea of absolute space on the basis that, as the condition u nder which relations of interaction can be formed and broken, it gives us a way of thinking about how these various coordinate systems are expressions of 'space' without reducing them to 'a' space. Although the general shape of this idea is unmistakably attractive, the prob­ lem with it is that there is no real account of why systems of spatial relations are expressions of 'space', or how it enables us to unify them. What needs to be thought through is the rela­ tionship between spatial relations and causal interactions: how proximity relations function as a condition of causal interaction (e.g . , how 'touching' Osaka is dependent upon ' being in' Osaka), on the one hand, and how possible interactions function as a condition of coordinate systems (e.g . , how different ranges of movement motivate different choices of map) , on the other. Harman's account of space provides us with no resources to formulate, let alone address these questions, and so shouldn't be taken seriously. If this is bad , the situation is much worse when it comes to Harman's account of 'time'. However, to see this, it's worth examining some of Harman's comments about the supposed difference between space and time. which requires quoting the relevant sections of Guerrilla Metaphysics extensively. To begin with , he makes a seemingly bold break with traditional thinking about space and time: Everyone puzzles over "time's arrow" and why and whether it only flows i n one direction, but no one has ever asked about "space's arrow," since reversibility seems to belong to the very (fJ Cl )> 0 m )> z 0 _, ;;:: m

196 essence of spatial movement. But we can now see a way in which the opposite is true. Namely, time is a/ways reversible, lJJ ::;; because on the interior of a relation it makes no difference f0 z <( when the Taj Mahal cycles from pink to blue to yellow to orange lJJ 0 <( [)._ (/") to black and finally to pink again. The sequence can go in any order and reverse itself any number of times without shifting the regi me of objects. But this is not so with space. When I move from Chicago to Davenport and back to Chicago, it is space that has changed, since objects are to some extent no longer what they were: houses have been torn down or rehabilitated, brain cells have developed or died, friendships have formed or decayed, old wounds have healed slightly [ ... ] Time can always be reversed on the interior of an object, because the shifting gales of black noise within have no direct consequence for the regime of objects. But space can never be reversed, and we can never return to the same airport twice-the regime of objects will have shifted . 238 When reading the a bove passage, one might. and indeed should, get the sense that something has gone awry in his discussion of space and time, such that what he calls 'space' and 'ti me' have become completely u n m oored from their everyday reference. It is important to show that this is not some brilliant metaphysical rebellion against our common ways of thinking about space and time, but amounts, at best, to radically changing the subject of debate without chang­ ing its terms. The best way to make this clear is to quote Harman's elaboration of this passage, and to highlig ht the offending phrases: 238. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 251 .

If someone now rephrases the traditional question and asks 197 whether "space's arrow" can ftow in both directions, the answer must be in the negative. The reason for this is interesting. When objects enter i nto a relation, the relation cannot necessarily decompose again into the same objects: two chemicals might necessarily mix to form a third , but this does not imply that the new ftuid is able to break down into its original parts. There is an asymmetry of cause and effect. and this is why space is irre­ versible. There are lasting consequences to space, but none to time, that transient fulguration along the surface of things-or rather, in the molten cores of things. Time itself creates nothing, while spatial changes create lasting monuments.239 It should now be easier to see precisely what is wrong : Har­ man distinguishes space from time by means of temporal terms. Even if one disputes the idea that talk of cause and effect is inherently temporal, one cannot deny that the dis­ tinction between ' lasting' and 'transient' consequences is a temporal one; but it is the phrase 'spatial changes' that is most indicative. by condensing the conceptual confusion into a bitesize oxymoron-thinking about change presupposes time, which means one cannot oppose spatial changes to temporal ones. Moreover, this cannot be viewed as an isolated logical slippage-consider the reformulation of the question ' Is time fi nite or infinite? ' in the conclusion to his essay ' Space, Time, and Essence: An Object-Oriented Approach ' : "Is time finite or infinite?" U nder t h e object-oriented model time unfolds only on the interior of an object. As long as objects exist, 239. I bid . . 252, my emphasis. (fJ � 0 m )> z 0 :::! s:: m

198 time must exist. The question can thus be rephrased as follows: " must objects a/ways exist? " 2�0 w :::; i= 0 z <( w 0 <( D.. Cf) This subordination of time's extent to objects' persistence sim­ ply presu pposes a deeper time in which they might or might not persist-a time whose logic is indistinguishable from the everyday time out of which this metaphysical question arises. Harman's 'time' is thus not only not what we usually mean by the word , but is actually parasitic upon it-'time' makes sense only insofar as we implicitly understand time but refrain from explicitly thematising it. Once one sees the deep time l u rking behind the sur­ face 'time' in Harman's metaphysics, it cannot be u nseen. Worse, one cannot help but see it everywhere. For instance, the contrast between types of variation through which we articulated the tensions constitutive of 'space' and 'time' is essentially about change, and thus presupposes deep time. However, if we pull on this conceptual thread it unravels Har­ man's system all the way back to the beginning. The contrasts between execution and causation. persistence and change, and synchronic dependence and diachronic affection, through which we have managed to make sense of Harman's system, are all fundamentally temporal. It is not simply that one term in each distinction is temporal (causation. change, diachronic affection ) , but that both terms denote types of occurrence (executing, persisting, depending, etc . ) . The twisted temporal logic underlying these distinctions was evident in the temporal tension in the argument from execution, but it is most promi­ nent in Harman's repeated appeals to the reality of change in his arguments against relationism and holism in Heidegger, 240. Towards Speculative Realism. 166, my emphasis.

Whitehead, and Latour.241 The whole trajectory of Tool-Being 199 out of which the account of vicarious causation emerges turns around the recognition that things must change within the subterranean real m of withdrawn objects, even if we only experience the ripples these changes produce i n the glim­ mering surface world. These real changes and the time they presuppose are explicitly not accounted for by what passes for 'time' at the level of sensual change, and are treated as mysterious enough to demand a whole new theory of causa­ tion. In essence, the rift between changes that belong to the seamless functioning of an existing apparatus (surface 'time' ) and the changes that belong to the erupting malfunctions that disrupt and reconfigure these regimes (deep time) is not a theoretical consequence of Harman's metaphysical system , b u t t h e pre-theoretic fou ndation u pon which i t is built. I V. P H E N O M E N A A N D N O U M E N A Having examined the problems with Harman's theory of space and time in detail, we are now left to extrapolate their con­ sequences. This brings us at long last to the central claim of my i nterpretation of Harman's philosophy: namely, that it is not a critique, but rather a consolidation of correlation­ ism . Harman's theory of space and time provides the most illustrative case of convergence between correlationism and object-oriented philosophy. To see this, we simply need to return to the initial problem out of which Meillassoux's discus­ sion of correlationism grows in After Finitude - what he calls ancestrality, or the confrontation between empirical science and the a rche-foss i l : 241 . See chapter 2 . 2 . subsection 1 , and chapter 3.3. 'U I m z 0 s: m z )> )> z 0 z 0 c s: m z )>

200 The question that interests us here is then the following: what is it exactly that astrophysicists, geologists, or paleontologists ..,; z w ::;; ::::J 0 z 0 z ..,; ..,; z w ::;; 0 z w I 0.. are talking about when they discuss the age of the universe. the date of the accretion of the earth, the date of the appear­ ance of pre-human species, or the date of the emergence of humanity itself? How are we to grasp the meaning of scientific statements bearing explicitly upon a manifestation of the world that is posited as anterior to the emergence of thought and even of life-posited, that is, as anterior to every form of human relation to the world? Or, to put it more precisely: how are we to think the meaning of a discourse which construes the relation to the world that of thinking and/or living-as a fact inscribed among others, inscribed in an order of succession in which it is merely a stage, rather than an origin? How is science able to think such statements, and in what sense can we eventually ascribe truth to them? 242 As others have noted , this is not meant to provide an argu­ ment against correlationism (which comes later i n the book), but to confront it with an unpalatable consequence of its restriction of knowing to the human-world correlate. Harman's presentation of this unpalatable consequence in his book on Meillassoux is admirably clear and concise: The problem for correlationism is that it cannot give a literal interpretation of scientific statements [ ... ] The literal claim that the earth dates to "1·56 billion years ago must give way to a second , more sophisticated interpretation of this statement. We have seen that. instead of saying the earth is 456 billion years older than humans, the correlationist says that the earth is "1·56 2"12. Meillassoux, After Finitude, 9-10.

billion years older than humans-for humans. No matter how 201 skilled the sciences become at dating pre-human entities, the correlationist always has the trump card of turning all ancestral dates into dates for us [ ... ] Correlationists do indeed claim that they are not merely trapped in a human interior, when they 'read­ ily [insist] upon the fact that consciousness, like language, enjoys an originary connection to a radical exteriority (exemplified by phenomenological consciousness ( ... ] transcending toward the world ) ·. But Meillassoux rightly calls this supposed exteriority 'a transparent cage', and notes that in this way 'contemporary philosophers have lost the great outdoors, the absolute outside of pre-critical thinkers ( ... ] that outside which was not relative to us [ ... ] existing in itself whether we are thinking of it or not'. 243 The problem for Harman is that this is an equally clear and concise description of the consequences of his own theory of time. For him, the surface 'time' of all phenomenal experi­ ence ( i ncluding empirical investigation) is not the deep time in which the real reconfigurations of objects occur ( i ncluding the emergence of humanity) , and this means that whatever systems of temporal relations empirical science employs to date such events are for us in precisely the sense he outlines, along with the systems of spatial relations in terms of which it locates them. To all appearances, this leaves Harman trapped in the same transparent cage as Kant and his successors. Thus the question is what. if anything, differentiates Har­ man's supposed realism from the appeals to a n 'originary connection with radical exteriority' that he and Meillassoux so rightly scorn. This question can only be answered by prop­ erly delimiting the convergence between object-oriented 243. Philosophy in the Making, 11-12. " I m z 0 s:: m z J> J> z 0 z 0 c s:: m z J>

202 philosophy and correlationism. The obvious way to begin this delimitation is by returning to the origin of correlationism in <( z w ::;; :::> 0 z 0 z <( <( z w ::;; 0 z w I a.. Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena. and determining its proximity to Harman's distinction between the sensual and the real. There are obviously numerous parallels between these distinctions. but they are essentially u nited by their epistemological implications: we cannot know noumena/ real objects, because we only ever encounter phenomena/ sensual objects. The crucial point to take away from the above discussion is that Harman's theory of 'space' and 'time' implies that the particular spatio-temporal systems in terms of which we locate and date entities and events operate at the phenomenal/sensual level, in essentially the same way as forms of intuition in Kant's theory of space and time. Harman might wish to claim that he has regained the great outdoors. because his real objects exist in themselves 'whether we are thinking of [them] or not ,' but he cannot articulate this inde­ pendent existence i n terms of any anteriority circumscribed by empirical science. He might insist that there is nevertheless some sort of deep anteriority that can be distinguished from surface anteriority, or a sort of primitive past that is demanded by the present but which can never be dated in relation to it.244 However. not only would .this involve precisely the sort of thematisation of deep time that his work eschews. but it is not clear how it could possibly be justified within his framework. This is made more problematic by the fact that merely insist­ ing that real objects exist is insufficient to distinguish them from Kantian noumena. insofar as this claim is precisely what 244 . This is not dissimilar to lain Hamilton Grant's account of anteriority in Schelling ( l . H . Grant, ' Does Nature Say What-It-ls?', in Bryant. Harman and Srnicek [eds] , The Speculative Turn, 66-83).

distinguishes Kant's weak correlationism from the strong 203 correlationism that follows it: We claimed above that Kantian transcendentalism could be iden­ tified with a 'weak' correlationism. Why? The reason is that the Critical philosophy does not prohibit all relation between thought and the absolute. It proscribes any knowledge of the thing-in­ itself (any application of the categories to the supersensible) , but maintains the thinkability of the in-itself. According to Kant. we know a priori that the thing-in-itself is non-contradictory and that it actually exists. By way of contrast. the strong model of correlationism maintains not only that it is illegitimate to claim that we can know the in-itself, but also that it is illegitimate to claim that we can at least think it. 245 If OOP is to avoid becoming indiscernible from this weak correlationism. we must be able to articulate the precise point at which it radicalises the latter. just as Meillassoux's speculative materialism radicalises strong correlationism . Meillassoux's description of correlationism delimits this point of radical divergence as well as it does the preceding convergence: [C]orrelationism is not a metaphysics: it does not hypostatize the correlation; rather it invokes the correlation to curb every hypostatization, every substantialization of an object of knowl­ edge which would turn the latter into a being existing in and of itself. To say that we cannot extricate ourselves from the horizon of correlation is not to say that the correlation could exist by itself, independently of its incarnation in individuals. We do not know of any correlation that would be given elsewhere than in 245. Meillassoux, After Finitude, 35. " I m z 0 ;;;: m z :t> :t> z 0 z 0 c ;;;: m z :t>

the human beings, and we cannot get out of our own skins to 204 <( z w ::;; ::J 0 z 0 z <( <( z w ::;; 0 z w I a._ discover whether it might be possible for such a disincarnation of the correlation to be true. 246 Harman's radicalisation of Kant turns u pon this question of disincarnation: he insists, pace Kant. that we do in fact know that the correlation is 'given elsewhere than in human beings'. This is not a metaphysical response to weak correlationism, but the conversion of weak correlationism into a metaphys­ ics. The difference between Kant's noumenon and Harman's real object is thus that. whereas the former is fundamentally an epistemological notion that circumscribes the l i mits of empirical knowledge, the latter is a metaphysical notion that grounds t hese l i m its. For Kant. the t h i n kability of the i n ­ itself does not provide us w i t h a n y positive knowledge o f i t ; o u r knowledge o f its existence a n d non-contradictoriness i s merely a critical deli mitation o f what it means for there t o be something-we-know-not-what. For Harman, the in-itself is not merely thinkable but genuinely knowable, even if all that can be known about it are the conditions that make it otherwise unknowable. Although this ( metaphysical) knowability of (empirical) u nknowability is entirely consistent, we are left to wonder what unique characteristic of metaphysical knowledge makes it possible when all else is impossible. This wonder gets to the heart of the relation between what Harman thinks and why he thinks it. and thereby reignites the methodological worries that have plagued our attempt to make sense of his work from the beginning. We have seen several crucial points at which the development of Harman's meta­ physics has been guided by appeals to certai n fundamental 246. Ibid . , 1 1 .

facts about the real : the existence of real discreteness, the 205 existence of real change/causation, and most recently, the existence of rea l time/anteriority. The i mportant thing to understand about these facts is that, even though the value of Harman's fourfold schema depends u pon its ability to make sense of them, it does not , for all that, imply them: it is consist­ ent with there being only phenomenal discreteness (Apeiron) ,247 it is consistent with there being only phenomenal change ( world-machine) , and it is consistent with there being nothing but a phenomenal past ( ancestrality) . There is a distinct lesson to be learned from each of these appeals to metaphysical fact . I n the first case, we saw that Harman attempts to use the 'glaring experiential fact' of discreteness to u nderwrite its reality. This seems somewhat paradoxical given the incom­ mensurability between the real and the sensual , as his account of individuation prevents us from inferring the number of real objects from the number of sensual objects. This paradox is indicative of the peculiar i ntersection of phenomenology and metaphysics that defines Harman's work , as it suggests that the reality of multiplicity is made manifest by the appearance of multiplicity. The second case is similar to the first, insofar as Harman seems to use the appearance of change and causal i nteraction to underwrite their real ity. This is complicated somewhat by his tendency to associate these with the reality of discreteness in his arguments against radical holism. How­ ever, there is more to this appeal, because Harman is able to i ntrospectively secure the reality of causation by using the way that we are emotionally affected by experience as the paradigm of real causal interaction and change. I n both of these cases there is an appeal to a peculiar sort of phenomenological 247. See chapter 2.2, subsection I l l . " I m z 0 ;;:: m z l> l> z 0 z 0 c ;;:: m z l>

206 intuition capable of providing oblique access to the real . The final case is somewhat different from the others. because it <( z w :; :::J 0 z 0 z <( <( z w :; 0 z w I Q_ is less an explicit appeal to metaphysical fact than an implicit dependence u pon a metaphysical frame through which the other facts are u nderstood . The reality of a deep time in which objects can come i nto being and cease to be provides the phenomenological background against which the intuitions of discreteness and causation emerge. Without this unthe­ matised conception of time. his picture of vacuum-sealed objects that are nevertheless capable of violent interactions makes no sense. So. what does this tell us about the form of metaphysical knowledge that Harman takes to be possible? It indicates that the oblique access to the structure of the real provided by his phenomenological method is of the same kind as the oblique access to real objects provided by allure: sensual multiplicity alludes to real multiplicity; causation is not merely alluded to, allusion is the very paradigm of causation; and time is the implicit and properly inexplicable background that is only ever alluded to. Of course, this is consistent with Harman's own thoughts about both the general importance of allure and the specific character of philosophical method as opposed to that of the sciences.248 However. the idea that the only possible knowledge of the real and its structure depends u pon allure as a mode of access, and thereby upon allusive language (i.e., metaphor) as a mode of expression. should give us cause for concern. The problem that ancestrality poses for correlation­ ism is precisely that it is u nable to take the claims of science literally. It makes their apparent truth compatible with the i m possibility of knowing the real by redescribing them as 2'18. Cf. Weird Realism, 11-23.

true claims about appearance (i.e . . as true-for-us) . This is the 207 semantic component of its epistemic scepticism. I n defend­ ing the possibility of metaphysical knowledge against this semantic strategy, one might think that Harman had finally enabled us to take some claims about the real l iterally, but his interpretation of this knowledge as fou nded u pon allure does precisely the opposite. We are left in a position where what we took to be literal claims about the world (e.g .. 'the earth is LJ. 56 billion years older than humans') are covertly figura­ tive. and what appear to be figurative claims about the world (e.g . , 'the world is composed of vacuum sealed objects with molten cores' ) are prototypically literal. Seen aright , this is not a counterintuitive insight that is to be welcomed , but an intractable contradiction symptomatic of the deep and abiding influence of correlationism upon Harman's thought. If there is one overriding irony we have exposed in this chapter, it is that the supposedly metaphysical connection that Harman draws between correlationism and relationism has been very effective at concealing the far more significant epistemological convergence between correlationism and OOP. -iJ I m z 0 ,;:: m z }> }> z 0 z 0 c ,;:: m z }>

4. W H AT A R E O BJ ECTS A N YWAY? : O N O N TO LO G I CA L L I B E RA L I S M Si nce William of Occam introduced his eponymous razor, there has been a distinct tendency towards ontological con­ servatism in philosophy. This is to say that there has been a consistent pressure to demonstrate the explanatory worth of our ontological commitments, so that we are discouraged from littering our map of the world with superfluous entities. This perennial conservatism went largely unchallenged until Meinong 's controversial The Theory of Objects, which , as discussed above, insisted u pon granting ontological status to every possible object of thought, including those that merely subsist because they do not genuinely exist (e.g .. the present king of France, the largest prime number, the younger sister I never had, etc.) .249 This challenge was motivated by the project of circumscribing the full range of possible intentional relations, a task that animated the Austrian school of phi­ losophy that emerged out of Brentano's work. However, this project was developed along divergent lines: metaphysically, by explicitly differentiating between existence and subsist­ ence ( Meinong and his successorsY. and phenomenologically, by explicitly bracketing questions of existence ( Husserl and his successors).250 Let us call this the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism. 249. A. Meinong, The Theory of Objects. tr. I . Levi. D.B. Terrell, R . M . Chisholm. in R . M . Chisholm (ed . ) . Rea/ism and the Background of Phenomenology ( New York: The Free Press, 1960), 76-117, <http://www.hist-analytic.com/ Meinongobjects.pdf>. 250. With regard to Meinong and his successors, we have explained the motiva­ tions of his theory and their effect upon Harman's metaphysics in more depth in 209 :;: I )> .., )> "' m 0 CD (... m 0 .., (fJ )> z -< :;: )> -< '"

210 When the tendency toward ontological conservatism con­ verged with the paradigm of explanatory reductionism in C- · >­ <( :;:: >­ z <( Cl) r­ u w --, (lJ 0 w et: <( >-­ <( I :;:: the twentieth century, a different response emerged . which refused to withhold existence from any entities whose fea­ tures could in principle be derived from more fundamental entities (e. g . , reducing economic systems to individual actors, reducing mental episodes to neurological states, reducing macroscopic objects to microscopic particles, etc . ) . Rather than being motivated by a particular explanatory problem such as intentionality, this response was motivated by more general concerns with explanation as such. However, these concerns were also developed along divergent lines: metaphysically, by developing a positive account of emergence in contrast to reduction ( Deleuze and his allies) , and methodologically, by diluting the relevant criteria of explanatory worth ( Latour and his allies) .251 Let us call this the anti-reductionist challenge to ontological conservatism . More recently, a new generation of thinkers has synthe­ sised these challenges in a way that no longer merely rejects the virtues of ontological conservatism, but actively articulates the 'Sense and Sensuality' chapter (chapter 3.1 ) . With regard to Husserl and his successors. it is important to note that Heidegger differs from much of the rest of the phenomenological tradition in attempting to use the bracketing provided by the phenomenological method to methodologically ground metaphysics. See my The Question of Being for further details. 251 . With regard to Deleuze, the important reference is his and Guattari's A Thousond Plateaus. tr. B. Massumi ( M inneapolis: Minnesota University Press. 1983) : his allies include figures such as Manuel Delanda, Isabelle Stengers, and the proponents of complexity theory (cf. Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. The Col­ lapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World [ London: Penguin, 199"1 ] ) . With regard to Latour. the crucial reference is his ' lrreductions' (second part of The Pasteurization of France [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993] ) : his allies include figures such as Michel Serres, Jane Bennett, and the adherents of actor network theory (ANT) who draw upon him.

and espouses the virtues of ontological l iberalism. This is to 211 say that there has been growing pressure to reject the tradi­ tional worry about excessive ontological commitment in favour of a contemporary concern with comprehensive ontological commitment, so that we are encouraged to account for the full range of possible objects of thought. experience, and explanation. In drawing upon all of the above i nfluences-unit­ ing H usserl and Meinong i n his account of representation,252 exploiting the homogeneity of Latour's explanatory networks,253 and appealing to the spatio-temporal levels of Delanda's theory of emergence254-Harman is the paragon of this liberal synthesis. Although the banners of ' flat ontology' ( Bhaskar and Delanda) and 'the democracy of objects' ( Latour) had already been raised before it, the banner of object-oriented ontology (000) raised by Harman and flown by others ( Bryant, Bogost, and Morton) has proved to be a rallying point for those drawn to ontological liberalism, and its manifesto is contained in the opening lines of The Quadruple Object: I nstead of beginning with radical doubt, we start from naivete. What philosophy shares with the lives of scientists, bankers. and animals is that all are concerned with objects. The exact meaning of "object" will be developed in what follows, and must 252. Chapter 3.1 . 253. Chapter 3.3, subsection 2 . 25"1 . This aspect o f Delanda's influence on Harman is not something we have addressed in any depth. It is evident from his discussion of Delanda's multi-layered ' flat ontology' ( Towards Speculative Realism. 178-82) and his subsequent adoption of this term (albeit with a slightly modified meaning, cf. ' Response to Garcia', Parrhesia 16 [2013 ] . 27). This expands upon the concept of ' levels' that he had already drawn from Alphonso Lingis's work (Guerrilla Metaphysics. chapter 5 ) . 0 � m 0 __, (/) }> z -< � }> -< ·0

212 include those entities that are neither physical nor even real. Along with diamonds. rope. and neutrons. objects may include .,.. � :;: >­ z <>: (/) f­ u w ..., CD 0 w n: <>: !;;: I :;: armies, monsters, square circles. and leagues of real and fictitious nations. All such objects must be accounted for by ontology, not merely denounced or reduced to despicable nullities. Yet despite repeated claims by both friends and critics of my work. I have never held that all objects are "equally real." For it is false that dragons have autonomous reality in the same manner as a telephone pole. My point is not that all objects are equally real , but that they are equally objects. It is only in a wider theory that accounts for the real and the unreal alike that pixies, nymphs. and utopias must be treated in the same terms as sailboats and atoms. 255 This is the archetypical form of the demand for comprehen­ siveness that animates ontological liberalism. On the one hand. it deploys the favoured rhetorical device of anti-reductionism: extensive lists of objects ranging from the everyday to the extraordinary, which seem to collapse barriers between diver­ gent explanatory registers simply by including diverse terms alongside one another.256 On the other, it i nvokes the vast noetic expanse of the Austrian school: menageries of fan­ tasms and fictions whose lack of ' reality' is no good reason to ignore them. These are the two expressive strategies through which Harman endeavours to encapsulate the idea that ontol­ ogy must accou nt for 'everything'. Nevertheless, there is more to contemporary ontological liberalism than 000. In particular, thinkers such as Tristan Garcia and Markus Gabriel have championed the demand for 255. The Quadruple Object. 5. 256. This device has been dubbed the · Latour litany' by Ian Bogost.

comprehensiveness in their own ways: the former systemati­ 213 cally in his Form and Object, and the latter more sporadically u nder the h ead ing of Transcendental Ontology.257 Garcia best captures the cu rious affect that seems to motivate this demand: "' I :t> __, :t> :0 m 0 � Our time is perhaps the time of an epidemic of things. A kind of 'thingly' contamination of the present was brought about through the d ivision of labour, the industrialisation of production, the processing of information, the specialisation of the knowledge of things, and above all the desubstantialisation of these things. I n Western philosophical traditions, things were often ordered according to essences, substrata, qualities. predi­ cates, quidditas and quadditas, being and beings. Precluding anything from being equally 'something', neither more nor less than any other thing, thus becomes a rather delicate task. We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things. Some resist, considering themselves, thought, conscious­ ness, sentient beings, personhood , or gods as exceptions to the flat system of interchangeable things. A waste of time and effort. For the more one excludes this or that from the world of things, the more and better one makes something of them, such that things have this terrifying structure: to subtract one of them is to add it in turn to the count. 258 257. T. Garcia, Form and Object : A Treatise on Things. tr. M. A Ohm and J. Cogburn ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014 ) ; M. Gabriel. Transcen­ dental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism ( London: Bloomsbury, 2013) . 2 5 8 . Garcia, Form and Object, i . m () __, (/) :t> z -< "' :t> -< '"

214 Moreover, in discussing his proximity with Harman, Garcia successfully pinpoints the crucial commitment u nderpinning C:-· >­ ..: 3: >­ z -0: (/) >-­ () UJ ..., ro 0 UJ "' -0: the liberal synthesis: Form and Object and Harman's object-oriented ontology are thought-experiments on the "equality" of all things. Both see philosophy as having an imperative to combine knowledge and morality so that they cannot be separated. The role of philosophy � is to understand what composes the world and the way to divide 3: and order its elements on an equal plane by refusing to attribute I any ontological privilege to anything in particular. It is therefore a question of grasping the equal ontological chance that every thing has. whether it is material. immaterial, possible. necessary, true. or false. 259 In essence, what binds these new ontological liberals together is a commitment to some form of ontological egalitarian­ ism: their demand to account for all things is fundamentally connected to the demand to account for them equally. This shows us that not only does the motivation for Harman's metaphysics hang u pon whether this conceptual connec­ tion can be made coherent. but so does the motivation for the liberal trend to which it belongs. If we are to analyse this connection then we must look deeper than Harman's fairly superficial strategies for encapsulating 'everything' and the supposedly egalitarian notion of 'thing' (or 'object' ) that this implies. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to this task. If we are to examine the notion of ontological commitment 259. T. Garcia, 'Crossing Ways of Thinking: On Graham Harman's System and My Own', tr. J. Cogburn and M . Ohm, in Parrhesia 16 (2013), 15.

in more detail, it will first be necessary to clarify what we 215 mean by 'ontology'. This will provide the necessary historical background to explain Quine's famous analysis of ontological commitment in 'On What There ls',260 which establishes the crucial link between ontological commitment and quantification, on the basis of which it will be possible to explain the logical connection between the problem of defining existence and the problem of unrestricted quantification. This will provide us with the necessary conceptual background to explain the final and in many ways most significant influence u pon contemporary ontological liberalism: Alain Badiou's set-theoretical approach to ontology i n Being and Event. This detour i nto the logical role of ontological commitment will enable us to locate the precise point at which Harman's ontological egalitarianism falls short of the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism. This will then be supplemented by a discussion of the explanatory role of ontological commitment that locates the correspond­ ing point at which Harman's egalitarianism falls short of the anti-reductionist challenge to conservatism. These fault lines within Harman's project will then be traced back to a con­ ceptual problem with his formulation of the metaphysics of 'objects', and a corresponding methodological problem with his formulation of the ' metaphysics' of objects. The chapter will close by addressing the wider conceptual problem with ontological liberalism, and how this emerges from the wider methodological problem regarding the relation between logic and metaphysics that has defined the last four sections. 260. W. V. 0. Quine. 'On What There Is', in From a Logical Point of View ( New York: Harper. 1953) . :;;: I )> -; )> ;o m 0 aJ '­ m () -; en )> z -< :;;: )> -< ·-.>

216 (/) u (/) >­ I Q_ <( 1w ::;; 0 z <( >­ (.') 0 _J 0 1z 0 I . O N TO LO GY A N D M ETA P H YS I C S Using the word 'ontology' in mixed philosophical company can prove challenging. The origin of the term lies in the scholastic division of metaphysics i nto its various sub-disciplines. in which ontology-as the science of beings qua beings-com­ prises metaphysica genera/is, or the attempt to articulate the structure of beings as such. as opposed to cosmology, psychology, and theology-the sciences of natural beings. rational beings, and the highest being-which form the tri­ partite division of metaphysica specia/is, or the attempt to circumscribe the structure of beings as a whole.261 However, gradually freed from these methodological shackles by the slow collapse of scholasticism. the sense of the term began to wander in divergent directions. As such, it is worth briefly tracing its wandering significance before delving i nto the discussion of ontological commitment. if only so as to avoid the various terminological confusions that are likely to arise. We will first explore the evolution of the term 'ontology' in the 'Continental' tradition, focusing u pon Heidegger's project of fundamental ontology and its i nfluence, before examin­ ing the independent reintroduction of the term into 'analytic' discourse by Quine and its consequences.262 However, the discussion of each tradition will require a preparatory analy­ sis of how the relevant problems emerge out of Kant and 261 . It is important to note that the scholastic division between metaphysica genera/is and metaphysica specialis is older than the term 'ontology', which was only introduced in the seventeenth century (cf. A. Baumgarten, Meta­ physics, tr. C. D. Fugate and J. Hymers [ London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013]; H. Caygill, A Kant Dictionary [Oxford: Blackwell, 1995]. 307-8). 262. I shall have more to say about the historical and sociological dimensions of the split between the 'analytic' and 'Continental' traditions of Western phi­ losophy below (chapters 3.5 and 4 .1 ) .

their divergent appropriations of his work. Overall, this will 211 enable us to articulate the parallels between the two traditions and thereby clarify what is at stake in our discussion of 'ontological commitment'. 0 z _, 0 r tradition, it is useful to begin with the observation that the 0 Gl -< )> z 0 tradition is often delineated historically as well as geographi­ :;:: m In tracing the development of 'ontology' in the Continental cally-as ' Post-Kantian European philosophy'. Although this attests to the general importance of Kant's thought within this tradition . it is essential to grasp the specific influence it has had upon the appropriation of scholastic 'ontology' and its subsequent development. Kant is very sensitive to the scholastic methodological framework in articulating his delimitation of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge in The Critique of Pure Reason: he dedicates the transcendental analytic and transcendental dialectic to the critical demarcation of the problems of metaphysica genera/is and metaphysica genera/is respectively. Although Kant initially presents the transcendental analytic and its account of the categories of pure understanding as replacing 'ontology', he subsequently adopts the term and treats the analytic as redefining its scope.263 Moreover, this redefiniti_on is carried out as part of a wider engagement with the scholastic interpretation of the meaning of 'metaphysics', which no longer simply groups those works of Aristotle that come after his physics, but names the study of that which is beyond physics because it is beyond experience.264 Although Kant 's critical demarcation rejects the possibility of such transcendent knowledge of the Being 263. Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, 307-8. 264 . Heidegger traces this shift in the meaning of the term in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (§§11-14 ) . _, )> -u I -< (/) 0 (/)

210 (/) (.) (/) >­ I Q_ ;:: w ::;; 0 z <( >­ (.') 0 __J 0 f-­ z 0 of 'things' ( Dinge) outside experience, insofar as it is discon­ nected from empirical (or immanent) knowledge of 'objects' ( Objekte) as they appear within it. he nevertheless secures the possibility of transcendental knowledge of their conditions of possibility. In essence, this means that Kant redefines ontology as the study of objects as such ( phenomena) as opposed to things as such ( noumena) . Notoriously, the disti nction between phenomena and noumena that underwrites this move is attacked by subsequent German idealists (e.g . . Hegel and Schelling ) , but we will refrain from discussing how this leads to the reincorporation of Kant's ideas within more classical metaphysical projects. I nstead. we will turn to H usserl's phenomenological trans­ position of the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism, because it marks the explicit dissociation of 'ontology' from ' metaphysics'. For H usserl , formal ontology concerns itself with the eidetic structures of intentionality in much the way that formal logic does. differing only insofar as it addresses the objects rather than the contents of intentional relations; whereas regional ontology concerns itself with delimiting the various domains of possible i ntentional objects (e.g .. physical , mathematical , historical , etc.) ._265 This distinction reconstitutes the scholastic division between the study of beings as such (formal ontology = metaphysica genera/is) and as a whole ( regional ontology = metaphysica specialis) , while segregating them from ' metaphysical' questions regarding the existence and coexistence of these beings within the world. However, this methodological segregation is precisely what H eidegger takes issue with in his critique of H usserl, insofar as it amounts to systematically excluding a fundamental sense of ' Being ' 265. Husserl. Ideas I, §§148-149.

(Sein) -existence ( Oaf3-sein) -from the formal ontological 219 analysis of beings ( Seienden) that is nevertheless foundational for this very analysis. In essence, although H usserl rejects Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena. he is only able to transpose ontology into phenomenology by presupposing a parallel distinction between reality and appearance (or Being [Sein] and seeming [Schein] ) that he is thereby u nable to thematise.266 Heidegger's own fundamental ontology is concerned with overcoming this problem by completely the­ matising the Being of beings (dos Sein des Seienden) on the basis of nothing but the pre-theoretical understanding of Being that we (Oasein) share in virtue of our ability to u nderstand any beings whatsoever. H owever, there is more to H eidegger's project than compensating for H usserl 's lack of methodological self-con­ sciousness in discussing ' Being', precisely because he sees this lack as endemic in the Western philosophical tradition. as exemplified by the scholastic appropriation of Aristotle's ' first philosophy' (prate philosophia) under the name of ' metaphys­ ics'. Heidegger locates the original division and articulation of the study of beings as such and as a whole in Aristotle's definition of first philosophy.267 Although Aristotle also defined 266. Heidegger discusses this distinction in detail in Introduction to Meta­ physics (103-22) . 267. Fundamental Concepts o f Metaphysics, 33. Heidegger also shows the way in which these two different inquiries emerge out of a single concern with physis. which is interpreted as both beings as such and beings as a whole. This develops into Heidegger's later analyses of physis as the initial form that Being takes at the beginning of the history of metaphysics. Cf. Introduction to Meta­ physics, 1'1-19; Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). tr. P. Emad and K. Maly ( Bloomington. I N : Indiana U niversity Press, 2000 ) , part I l l ; and 'The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics', in Identity and Difference, tr. J. Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. '12-7'1 : 66). 0 z _, 0 r 0 Gl -< )> z 0 s:: m _, )> " I -< (/) 0 (/)

220 first philosophy as theology, or that wh ich concerns itself with the divine first cause, this characterisation is derivative, [/) (.) [/) >­ I a._ � w ::; 0 z .. >­ (!) 0 _J 0 f­ z 0 because the first cause (God- theos) is supposed to be that through which we think beings as such and as a whole. This division is the foundation of Heidegger's whole critique of the metaphysical tradition, insofar as he holds that Aristotle never actually explained the underlying unity of the two halves of his defi nition of first philosophy, but merely posited an ad hoc theological principle to hold them together. Heidegger claims that the defining characteristics of the metaphysical tradition are all consequences of this move. The first consequence is the beginning of what he calls the forgetting of Being-the i ncreasing lack of methodological self-consciousness that creeps into metaphysics over the course of its history (e.g . , the H usserlian exclusion of existence from ontology) . The second consequence is the birth of what he calls onto-theology-the systematic ignorance of what he calls the ontological differ­ ence, or the distinction between Being (the structure of beings as such and as a whole) and beings themselves (e.g . , the scho­ lastic account of beings as ens creatum in relation to God as ens increatum) . The final consequence is the convergence of the previous two-the historical tendency to think Being (Sein) as substance ( ousia) . 268 The tortured relationship between the terms 'ontology' and ' metaphysics' in the Continental tradition emerges out of the ways in which later thinkers appropriate and/or react to these i nsights. It is a common assumption i n Continental circles that Heidegger's renewal of the question of Being in the face of its historical forgetting amounts to a decisive rejection of 'metaphysics' in favour of 'ontology'. However, the truth is far 268. Cf. Introduction to Metaphysics.

more complicated . In Being and Time, Heidegger describes 221 his project as 'fundamental ontology' not so as to distinguish it from ' metaphysics', but in order to emphasise its continuity with H usserl's project of formal ontology.269 Although many 0 z -i 0 r found in this work, it does not identify the tradition's problems 0 Gl -< )> z 0 with metaphysics as such . Moreover, there is a distinct period m of Heidegger's criticisms of the metaphysical tradition can be following Being and Time in which he presents his project as a renewal of metaphysics. 270 It is only later on that he begins to view these problems as inherently metaphysical, and that the word ' metaphysics' takes on the pejorative sense it has in so much post-Heideggerian discourse; at the same time, the word 'ontology' also begins to disappear from his work, precisely as its continuity with H usserl's project fades.271 Nevertheless, those who come after Heidegger tend to treat 'metaphysics' 269. The project of fundamental ontology is sometimes read as identical with the inquiry into the Being of Dasein. In Being and Time. Heidegger seems to deny this. explicitly stating that: 'The analytic of Dasein [ ... ] is to prepare the way for the problematic of fundamental ontology- the question of the mean­ ing of Being in general. ' (Being and Time. 227) However, in Basic Problems of Phenomenology he states: ' We therefore call the preparatory ontological analytic of the Dasein fundamental ontology ( ... ] It can only be preparatory because it aims to establish the foundation for a radical ontology.' (224 ) It thus appears that what Heidegger means by 'fundamental ontology' shifts between these two works. I choose to use the term as it is used in Being and Time, where it names the project of grounding regional ontology by attempting to provide a concept of Being in general. 270. Cf. Heidegger. Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Introduction to Metaphysics. ' What is Metaphysics', in W. McNeill (ed . ) . Pathmarks (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge U niversity Press. 1998). and Metaphysical Foundations of Logic ( Bloomington, IN: Indianapolis U niversity Press. 1984 ) 271. The last substantive and indicatively minimal engagement with ontology is to be found in 'The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking' (in Basic Writings. ed. D. F. Krell ( London: Routledge Classics, 1993 ] ) . ;;:: -i )> 'U I -< en 0 en

222 Cf) u Cf) >­ I "­ <( r­ UJ ::;;; 0 z <( >­ (') 0 _J 0 r­ z 0 as inherently degenerate, and often treat 'ontology' as what the inquiry into Being (the structure of beings as such and as a whole) becomes once it has been divested of the baggage of the metaphysical tradition. Leaving the orthodox Heideg­ gerians to one side for the moment, we can distinguish three distinct post-Heideggerian rejections of metaphysics accord­ ing to the aspect of the concept of substance they hold responsible for its onto-theological legacy: presence ( Derrida), unity ( Badiou ) , or ground ( Meillassoux) . Derrida focuses u pon Heidegger's reading of substance as presence (Anwesenheit) -according to which the essence of metaphysics is the privileging of the temporal present.272 It is on this basis that he introduces the supposedly pleonastic phrase 'metaphysics of presence' that is so common in ortho­ dox discourse. This phrase signals a deeper affinity between the Heideggerian orthodoxy and its Derridean progeny, which consists in their mutual refusal to renew the project of ontology after 'the end of metaphysics' : they concur in demanding a practical reorientation of our relation to the $Ubject matter of metaphysics (the attitude of Gelassenheit, or the operation of deconstruction) , rather than a theoretical resolution of its problems (which would lapse back into metaphysics) ; they merely differ on the question of whether this reorientation is capable of overcoming metaphysics (so as to pass over i nto a 'second beginning ' ) or is condemned to remain within it (as an endless engagement with its ' l i mits' ) . 273 I n each case, the re­ orientation is prepared by subsuming H usserl 's u nthematised 272. J. Derrida. 'Ousia and Gramme'. in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1982), 29-68. 273. Cf. Heidegger, 'On the Essence of Truth'. in Pathmarks, 126-7; Basic Questions of Phenomenology, §§31-3 : Contributions to Philosophy, §85, §87, §91; Derrida , 'Ousia and Gramme', 63-7.

distinction between reality and appearance with i n a more 223 fundamental h istorical/temporal structure ( Ereignis or differance) through which beings come to presence (clearing or presencing) within a structured horizon ( Da-sein/world or arche-writingltext) in a manner that simultaneously erases and hints at its origins ( withdrawal or trace) ; as such, the refusal is enacted by sublimating the opposition between Being and seeming, thereby denying any role to 'ontology' that could be separated from their pragmatically reoriented 'phenomenology' of historical/temporal coming-to-presence. Badiou instead focuses upon the traditional link between substance and u nity most clearly espoused by Aristotle (for whom substances are units to be counted ) and Leibniz (for whom 'that which is not one being is not a being' ) -presenting the essence of metaphysics as this subordination of Being to the normative force of the one.274 Unlike Derrida and the later Heidegger, he uses this diagnosis to cleave ontology from met­ aphysics: he takes his axiomatic rejection of the one (or units) to imply the identity of ontology and mathematical set theory qua theory of pure multiplicity (or multiples without units) ; this does not so much foreclose ontology to philosophy as require a philosophical supplement (' meta-ontology') that can interpret the significance of its results.275 Badiou's commitment to the identity of ontology and mathematics inaugurates this supple­ ment-not only is it a philosophical rather than a mathematical thesis, but its intelligibility hinges u pon a precise reformulation of the opposition between Being (as inconsistent multiplicity) and appearing (as consistent multiplicity) that Heidegger and 274 . A. Badiou, 'The Question of Being Today", in Theoretical Writings, ed. , tr. R. Brassier and A. Toscano ( London: Continuum, 2006). 275. A. Badiou, Being and Event. tr. 0. Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005), 9-16. 0 z _, 0 r 0 Gl -< )> z 0 ;:: m _, )> "U I -< (/) 0 (/)

22� Cf) u Cf) >­ I Q_ <! f­ w ::;; 0 z <! >­ (_;) 0 _J 0 f­ z 0 Derrida sublimate.276 Badiou's definition of Being's appearance as its presentation in the form of countable units (or objects) is essentially a refinement of Husserl's transposition of the noetic challenge: it cleanly separates phenomenology as the logic of appearance (or the formal/regional circumscription of the range of possible objects) from ontology as the mathematical presentation of presentation (or the subtraction of what is presented in every situation [ inconsistent multiplicity] from its presentation [consistent multiplicity] ) .277 On the one hand, this makes phenomenology i nto a genuinely logical enterprise by unbinding it from any constraints imposed by 'consciousness' or ' i ntuition' and looking to category-theory for a formal analysis of the ( transcendental) conditions governing the relations of self-identity that constitute regions of countable objects (or worlds) .278 On the other hand , this overcomes the problems of phenomenological bracketing by confining existence to inconsistent multiplicity ( Being) and positing an archimedean point -the empty set ( 0 or the Void) -to which its existential import is indexed .279 Finally, Meillassoux focuses u pon the conceptual l i n k between substance a n d ground most clearly developed i n Spinoza and Leibniz's systematic extrapolations o f t h e principle of sufficient reason ( i n terms of a single substance or infinite substances ) - locating the essence of metaphysics in its search for an absolute ground (of existence and/or intelligibil­ ity) in the form of a necessary entity ( paradigmatically, the 276. Ibid . . Meditation I. 277. Badiou , ' Being and Appearance', in Theoretical Writings. 278. A Badiou , Logics of Worlds, tr. A Toscano ( London: Continuum, 2009). 279. Badiou, Being and Event. Meditation IV.

God of onto-theology) .280 Like Badiou , he uses his account of 225 metaphysics to secure the possibility of a non-metaphysical ontology: he provides a proof of the necessity of contingency that simultaneously precludes all metaphysical absolutes ( nec­ essary entities) and provides a non-metaphysical absolute (the principle of factiality) ; not only does this restrict the scope of ontology from 'what is' to 'what could be'-it also posits mathematics (the systematic extrapolation of the principle of noncontradiction) as that which thinks this pure contin­ gency (as opposed to pure multiplicity) and philosophy as that which interprets its significance (the figures of factiality) .281 This means that, although ontology is concerned with what necessarily exists (something ) , it is unconcerned with what actually exists (everything ) . The philosophical circumscri p­ tion of the various regions of actuality (or wor/ds) -types of objects, their qualities, and the laws that govern them-is thus not a phenomenological analysis of appearance, but a speculative exploration of reality.282 That this speculative supplementation of ontology amounts to something like a return to metaphysica specialis can be seen from the three 280. Meillassoux. After Finitude, 32-4 and_ 125-6. 281 . 'Speculative Realism' in Co/lapse vol. 3, 393: After Finitude, chapter 6: P. Wolfendale, "The Necessity of Contingency'. in P. Gratton, P. J. Ennis (eds) . The Meillassoux Dictionary ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014 ) . 282. This i s not t o say that there are not important connections between Meillassoux's treatment of the distinction between possibility and actuality and the distinction between reality and appearance (or Being and seeming) that is implicit in H usserl, problematised by Heidegger and Derrida. and explic­ itly reformulated by Badiou. Importantly. the way that Meillassoux uses the emergence of worlds from one another ex nihilo to underwrite the distinction between primary and secondary qualities (cf. After Finitude, chapter 1 : Phi­ losophy in the Making, appendix B) can be seen as grounding his account of appearance in his account of actuality. 0 z -; 0 r 0 Ci) -< )> z 0 ;:: m -; )> -0 I -< en 0 en

226 (fJ 0 (fJ >­ I D.. « f­ w ::!: 0 z « >­ C'J 0 _J 0 f­ z 0 worlds Meil lassoux takes to be extant-matter. life. and thought (cosmology/biology and psychology)-and the fourth world whose advent his speculative philosophy anticipates­ justice (theology) .283 What can we learn from this trajectory we have traced ? To begin with , it is worth recognising the transition from Kant to Husserl as the crucial moment in the evolution of correlationism. H usserl's formal ontology modifies metaphysica genera/is in essentially the same manner as Kant 's transcendental analytic, replacing its concern with beings qua beings (understood as things in themselves) with objects qua objects (understood as the correlates of thought); but he opposes this to metaphysics rather than redefining it (replacing metaphysica specialis with regional ontology) . This opposition is responsible not only for the split between ontology and metaphysics in the Continental tradition. but also for the emergence of correlationism as an anti- metaphysical stance. Husserl distances himself from Kant not so much by rejecting the distinction between phenomena and noumena (as the German idealists do) . but by practi­ cally subsuming it within the phenomenological reduction: he extracts the phenomenal by repressing the noumenal. This repression is responsible not only for the Heideggerian critique of metaphysics that subsequently shapes the tradition , but also for the emergence of strong correlationism as an alternative to Kant's weak correlationism. I n bracketing the existence of objects. H usserl's phenome­ nological reduction suspends the epistemological limit that Kant placed upon the correlation between subject and object-the existence and noncontradictoriness of things in themselves­ and thereby facilitates its reabsorption into the correlation . 283. Philosophy in the Making, appendix D.

The historical/temporal sublimation of the phenomena/nou- 221 mena distinction enacted by Heidegger and Derrida (through Ereignisldifferance) should be seen as a radicalisation of this suspension, and their corresponding practical reorientation towards metaphysics (in Gelassenheitldeconstruction) as the resultant transmutation of H usserl 's methodology. There are other forms of strong correlationism. some of which have inde­ pendent origins. but this Heideggero- Derridean form is without doubt the most influential in the Continental tradition .28� The mathematical reformulation of the Being/appearance distinc­ tion carried out by Badiou should be seen as breaking with this strong correlationism and returning to a form that is in many ways weaker than Kant's: reinstituting the existence of the in-itself (as indexed to the Void) and thereby deducing ontological constraints upon the logic of appearance beyond mere noncontradiction (the meta-ontological analysis of the relation between set theory [ontology] and category theory (phenomenology] ) .285 This contrasts with the radicalisation of strong correlationism performed by Meillassoux, which should be seen as converting its practical suspension of the in- itself (de-absolutisation) back into theoretical knowledge of it (an absolute) : demonstrating the absolute contingency of the 28'1 . Meillassoux explicitly acknowledges Wittgenstein as the founding figure of strong correlationism in analytic philosophy (After Finitude. '11-51 ) . whose Tractatus Logico Philosophicus is undoubtedly inspired by Kant's correlation­ ism. However, he also draws a useful distinction between universalist and anti­ universalist strains of strong correlationism, which differ on whether there is a universal structure of correlation (e.g .. language, consciousness, etc.). H usserl. the early Wittgenstein. the early Heidegger. and perhaps Habermas exemplify the former strain, and the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger. Derrida, and the loose agglomeration of thinkers who self-identify as 'postmodernists' ex­ emplify the latter. 285. Cf. Badiou, ' Kant's Subtractive Ontology' in Theoretical Writings. 0 z ...; 0 r 0 Gl -< )> z 0 ;;: m ...; )> "tJ I -< [fJ 0 [fJ

228 UJ 0 UJ >­ I [)._ <( f­ w ::;; 0 z <( >­ (') 0 -' 0 f­ z 0 in-itself and thereby deducing both its existence (as something rather than nothing) and its submission to non-contradiction (as the applicability of mathematics) . We are now in a position to show why the difference i n usage between t h e terms 'ontology' a n d ' metaphysics' in the Continental tradition has progressively narrowed since H us­ serl first placed them in opposition. On the one hand, what constitutes 'ontology' in the tradition has gradually become more like the ' metaphysics' it was originally opposed to: the initial exclusion of existential questions from ontology ( H usserl) gave way to a demand to thematise the notion of existence implicit in it ( Heidegger) , which in turn enabled the gradual reinclusion of these questions within a broader philosophical project ( Badiou and Meillassoux) . Meillassoux's speculative philosophy exemplifies this trend, insofar as it treats ontology as the core of a larger speculative enterprise that has more than a passing resemblance to the programmeof scholastic metaphysics. On the other, this shift has been accompanied by the decline of the 'end of metaphysics' narrative that was dominant in twentieth-century Continental philosophy after Heidegger. 286 Of course, metaphysics never entirely went away: there was always interest in self-avowed metaphysicians such as Hegel and Bergson, or in figures whose thought harboured an unexplored metaphysical dimension, such as N ietzsche and Bataille: but it wasn't really until Deleuze's self-avowed 286. Although it is in decline (or remission) it is far from dead. and has in fact been radicalised into a more general 'end of philosophy' narrative by Frarn,ois Laruelle, whose non-philosophy aims to axiomatically extend philosophical practice in much the way that Heidegger and Derrida aimed to pragmatically reorient it (cf. F. Laruelle, Principles of Non-Philosophy, tr. A. P. Smith ( London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013]; F. Laruelle, From Decision to Heresy, tr. M . Abreu e t al. ( Falmouth a n d New York: U rbanomic a n d Sequence Press. 2012 ] ) .

'metaphysics' became popular in Anglo-American Continental 229 philosophy that the term began to lose its pejorative edge.287 usage elides the traditional difference between ontology as 0 z -< 0 r 0 G) -< )> z 0 ;;: m -< )> -0 I -< (J) species (metaphysica genera/is) and metaphysics as genus [/) What one sees at the intersection of these two trends is an i ncreasing pressu re to place purported ly antimetaphysical figures such as Heidegger and Badiou and explicitly metaphysi­ cal figures such as Hegel and Deleuze i nto dialogue, and this results in the term 'ontology' being used as the lowest common denominator of their joint enterprise. However, this diplomatic (also including metaphysica specialis) . We can only hope that the increasing popularity of 'metaphysics' helps reverse this confusion by allowing 'ontology' to return to its more specific meaning.288 In tracing the development of 'ontology' in the analytic tradition we must return to a different part of Kant's critique of metaphysics: his famous response to the ontological argument that God 's existence follows from his essence.289 This argu­ ment. which lies at the heart of both scholastic theology (e.g .. Anselm) and early rationalist metaphysics (e.g . , Descartes) , essentially attem pts t o infer the actual existence of a possible 287. It is important to note that Deleuze is sensitive to Heidegger's critique of the metaphysical tradition: he acknowledges the problems of onto-theology and incorporates the idea of ontological difference into his work (cf. Difference and Repetition, 77-9) ; he simply rejects Heidegger's identification of onto­ theology and metaphysics; and on that basis continues to draw upon the tradi­ tion (e.g .. Spinoza and Leibniz). 288. It is worth noting that 8adiou has warmed to the term 'metaphysics' over time, precisely because it provides a better index of the relation between his project ( 'meta-ontology') and that of figures such as Deleuze (' Political Perver­ sion and Democracy', talk given at the European Graduate School 08/12/2004: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcKdPz83gYQ> ). 289. Kant. Critique of Pure Reason, 8620-30, 8660-70. 0

230 (/") u (/") >­ I 0.. <( f­ LLJ :;;: 0 z <( >­ (') 0 __J 0 f­ z 0 entity ( that it is, or its Oaf3-sein) from the properties that are predicated of it qua possibility (how it is, or its Sosein) , or from those determinations that are internal to its concept. Kant's negative thesis is that we can disqualify all such infer­ ences on the basis that existence is not a real predicate: to predicate existence of something is not to add anything to it qua possibility, but merely to posit its actuality, and therefore existence is a determination that is external to its concept. Kant's positive thesis is that positing the actuality of the thing is locating it within the intuitive bounds of experience, or situating it within the spatio-temporal realm of nature. The influence of these ideas u pon the analytic tradition begins with Frege, who accepts the negative but rejects the positive dimension of Kant's account of existence. Frege cashes out Kant's negative thesis that existence is not a 'real' predicate by interpreting it not as a (first-order) predicate of objects but as a (second-order) predicate of concepts: to make a general existential claim is to say of some concept that it is instantiated (e.g . , ' horses exist' is understood as 'the concept <horse> has at least one instance' ) . Russell then refines this account by explaining singular existential claims in terms of his theory of definite descriptions (e.g . , 'my horse exists' as 'there is a unique instance of the concept < horse that belongs to me> ' ) a n d h i s associated descriptive theory o f names (e.g . , 'Trojan exists' as 'there is a unique instance of the concept <horse that belongs to me, is black, is swift, is . . . etc . > ' ) .290 However, although this does much to clarify the form of existential claims, it is not clear that it does much to clarify their content- 290. See chapter 3.1 . subsection 2 for a more thorough description of Rus­ sell's theory of descriptions and the controversy over its extension into a theory of proper names.

the concept of instantiation is no less opaque than the concept 231 of existence it is supposed to explain.291 In order to show how this relates to the evolution of 'ontology' in the analytic tradition, it is necessary to say some­ thing about the evolution of ' metaphysics'. It is important to u nderstand that neither Frege nor Russell were anti-meta­ physical thinkers. Frege's mathematical platonism, which treats mathematical objects and senses as existing i ndependently of thought about them, is explicitly metaphysical . as is Russell 's logical atomism, which treats the propositions that provide the content of thoughts as actually composed by the individual objects and u niversals to which they refer.292 The rejection of ' metaphysics' in the analytic tradition begins with Wittgen­ stein's Tractatus Logico-Phi/osophicus. and its appropriation by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. Though in many ways a development of Russell's logical atomism, the Tractatus posed the first semantic challenge to metaphysics: it did not reject the possibility of knowing thi ngs in themselves, but the possibility of saying anything meaningful about them .293 291 . Frege is more perspicuous than Russell in this regard. He rejects Kant's positive thesis because he is concerned to provide an account of the existence of numbers, which are abstract objects and therefore non-spatio-temporal . He derives the existence of abstract objects from concrete ones by means of an operation of abstraction (e.g .. [abstract] orientations must exist because the relation '.. .is parallel to .. .' holds between [concrete] lines. such that 'the orienta­ tion of x ' is identical to 'the orientation of y' iff x is parallel to y). This does not provide a complete alternative to Kant's positive account. but it does present an important conceptual link between existence and criteria of identity (cf. Brandom. Making It Explicit, chapter 7 ) . 292. B. Russell, ' O n Propositions: What They Are a n d H o w They Mean', Pro­ ceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes. vol. 2. Prob­ lems of Science and Philosophy (1919), 1-Ll3. 293. This is the origin of strong correlationism in the analytic tradition. See p. 227 n. 28LI . 0 z _, 0 r 0 Gl -< :l> z 0 <:: m _, :l> "1l I -< (/) 0 (/)

232 This challenge was then developed and popularised by the Vienna Circle, who replaced Wittgenstein's account of meaning (J} u (J} >­ I CL <( t­ w :::; 0 z <( >­ (!) 0 _J 0 t­ z 0 as picturing with an account of meaning as verifiability, so that metaphysics is meaningless not because it cannot picture the structure of states of affairs, but because it cannot be empiri­ cally verified .294 Though this idea famously collapsed u nder its own weight-one cannot empirically verify the principle of verifiability-its sceptical i nertia infused the tradition that coalesced after the breakup of the Vienna Circle and the result­ ing diaspora of logical positivism .295 Nevertheless, this inertia is consolidated and focused by Carnap in a gesture that parallels H usserl's methodological suspension of the existence of things in themselves, determining the fate of 'ontology' in the analytic tradition much as H usserl did in the Continental tradition .296 In Carnap's logical empiricism, the mere fact that exis­ tential claims share the same syntactic form (e.g . , ' horses exist', 'societies exist ', 'transfinite cardinals exist', etc.) does not mean that they share the same semantic content (e.g . , horses, societies, and transfinite cardinals can 'exist' i n different senses) . He holds that existential questions are relative to the linguistic framework-or the set of rules governing the relevant terminology (e.g . , the frameworks of biology, sociology, and mathematics)-in which they are posed . It thus makes sense to ask questions that are internal to a given framework (e.g . , ' is there a transfi nite cardinal larger than t h e set o f rational 294 . M . Schlick. ' Meaning and Verification', Philosophical Review 45:4 (1936): 339-69. 295. The influence of this diaspora is why the analytic tradition is sometimes referred to as 'Anglo-Austrian' as much as 'Anglo-American'. 296. R. Carnap. · Empiricism. Semantics. and Ontology' in Revue Internatio­ nale de Phifosophie 4 (1950). 20-40.

numbers but smaller than the set of real numbers? ' in a math- 233 ematical context) , but not to ask questions that are external to a given framework (e.g . , 'do transfinite cardinals exist in the same way that horses exist ? ' ) ; metaphysical questions about existence are thereby replaced with pragmatic questions about our choice of linguistic frameworks.297 Carnap is thus even more radical than Husserl: not only does he pragmatically suspend 'metaphysical ' questions about the existence of things in them­ selves, he reduces anything like ' formal ontology' to syntactic analysis of language in general and anything like 'regional ontol­ ogy' to the semantic analysis of specific theoretical languages. This reduction has had an important influence on the meaning of 'ontology' in the sciences, where it is used to talk about the typology of entities implicit in a given theoretical framework (e.g . , anatomy, cosmology, economics, etc.).298 However, much as the meaning of 'ontology' in the Continental tradition is indexed to Heidegger's critique of Husserl, so is its meaning in the analytic tradition indexed to Quine's critique of Carnap. It is important to emphasise just how much Quine agrees with Carnap's views on metaphysics. Not only is he willing to accept Carnap's choice of semantics as the terrain on which the battle over the possibility of metaphysics is fought; he is also willing to accept that most of the substantive claims 297. See H . Price, ' M etaphysics After Carnap: The Ghost Who Walks? ' and M . Eklund, 'Carnap and Ontological Pluralism', in D. Chalmers, D. Manley and R . Wasserman (eds), Metametaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 320-46 and 1 50-56. 298. The explicit cultivation of such 'ontologies' is most popular in computer science and biomedical science. For a useful discussion of the terminology see Werner Ceusters, ' Biomedical Ontologies: Toward Sound Debate', <http:// www.referent-tracking.com/RTU/sendfile/?file=CeustersCommentaryOnMa ojolongVersion.pdf>. 0 z _, 0 r 0 G) -< l> z 0 ;;:: m _, l> "U I -< "' 0 "'

234 made by all sides in the history of metaphysics are strictly meaningless. He also shares Carnap's staunch commitment (/) () (/) to the priority of natural science, which, as we shall see, ulti­ � 'ontological commitment' he provides. Where Quine demurs >­ I n. w ::;; 0 z <( >­ (!) 0 mately leaves an untidy thread hanging from the account of is simply on the question of the meaningfulness of univoca/ existential commitments.299 Quine thinks that there are good semantic reasons to think that there must be a single and 0 privileged domain of objects in terms of which the meaning z 0 of 'exists' is to be understood . precisely because the external _J 1-­ existential question par excellence-' What is there? '-has an obvious and even trivial answer: ' Everything'. It is important to see that this rejection of Carnap's ontological pluralism functions by invoking the very connection between beings as such and beings as a whole from which metaphysics as a discipline originates. This goes some way to explaining the unintended con­ sequence of Quine's critique: the gradual reconstruction of metaphysics within the analytic tradition on the foundation of 'ontology'-no longer understood as the study of beings qua beings ( ' What is a being ? ' ) , but as the study of beings as a whole ( 'Which beings exist ? ' ) . Quine's aim was deflationary: he aimed to defend Frege and R ussell against the instantiation objection by showing that there simply is nothing more to be said about existence/instantiation than what is provided by the logical analysis of the syntax of existential claims. However, his influence was ultimately inflationary: not only did he enable analytic philosophers to argue for the (univocal) existence of naturalistically intractable entities-beginning with Quine's 299. Quine, 'On What There Is'.

own minimalistic commitment to the existence of numbers300 235 and leading to David Lewis's extravagant commitment to the existence of fully formed possible worlds301 - he inadvert­ ently legitimated more substantial analyses of the semantics of existential claims (so called analytic ' meta-ontology')302 and with it a range of more classical metaphysical problems beyond the scope of ontology: the metaphysics of relations (e.g . , Ladyman and Ross) modality (e. g . , Lewis) . universals (e. g . , Armstrong)303 and beyond .30� This return to 'metaphysics' via 'ontology' curiously mirrors the progression of Continental philosophy in the twentieth century. What remains is to try to synthesise the two stories just told . and to see how the notion of ontological commitment with which we began this chapter fits into the unified narrative. We have already seen that each tradition rejects ' metaphysics' only to revive some form of 'ontology'. which then paves the way for its return; but we have not yet articulated the crucial difference between their uses of 'ontology' and thus precisely how their paths diverge before they converge once more. This crux is the concept of existence: H usserl and Carnap 300. See Quine. The Roots of Reference ( La Salle, I L: Open Court, 1973), part I l l . 301. See D . Lewis. O n the Plurality o f Worlds (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001). 302. The Metametaphysics collection (see p. 233 n. 297, above) is an excel­ lent survey of contemporary work in this field. Kit Fine's essay ('The Ques­ tion of Ontology'. 157-77) provides the best example of the sort of substantial analysis that Quine himself rejects. 303. See D. M. Armstrong. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction ( Boulder. CO: Westview Press. 1989) . 30"1. O f course, there are figures in t h e analytic tradition who entirely ignore the Viennese rejection of metaphysics (e.g .. substance theorists such as E.J. Lowe and David Wiggins) . and there are others who stick with Carnap against Quine (e.g., neo-Carnapians such as Eli Hirsch and Huw Price) . 0 z _, 0 r 0 GJ -< )> z 0 s: m _, )> -,, I -< (/) 0 (/)

235 suspend it and H eidegger and Quine critique this suspen­ sion, but their attempts to explicitly thematise the concept >­ fu __J Q_ f­ __J ::0 2 0 z « z 0 f­ « u LL f­ z « ::0 C!> w u z w f­ (/) x w develop in opposing directions. On the one hand , the tradition that follows Heidegger treats 'ontology' as the study of what existence is-or what it is to be a being- retaining the core theme of metaphysica genera/is (e.g . , fundamental ontology) and ulti mately reconstructing the themes of metaphysica specialis on this basis (e.g . , regional ontology) . It is neverthe­ less resisted by an enduring correlationism that continues to reject unqualified existential claims until the work of Deleuze and Meillassoux. On the other hand , the tradition that follows Quine treats 'ontology' as the study of what exists-or which beings there are-retaining the core theme of metaphysica specialis (as applied ontology)305 and eventually regressing to the themes of metaphysica genera/is on this basis (as meta­ ontology) . Quine's introduction of the term 'ontological commit­ ment' to designate the unqualified existential claims to which our theories commit us is thus opposed to the correlationist vision of 'ontology' that is still alive in parts of Continental philosophy. We shall now proceed to examine Quine's account of ontological commitment and its importance for the debate between ontological conservatism and ontological liberalism. II. EXISTENCE, QUANTIFICATION, AND MULTIPLICITY In order to understand Quine's account of ontological commit­ ment it is necessary to explain how Frege and Russell 's idea that existence is a second-order predicate is formalised by 305. This term is introduced by Dale Jacquette in his book Ontology ( Mon­ treal: McGill-Queen's U niversity Press, 2002) and is contrasted to ' pure on­ tology' which covers both Heideggerian fundamental ontology and analytic meta-ontology.

contemporary logic. We have already explained how predicates 237 are usually understood as mathematical functions (e.g . , Fx) or open sentences (e. g . , ... is red ' ) , in which the variable must m x be given a determinate value (e.g . , Fa) or the sentence must --< m z () m · be completed with a singular term (e. g . , 'the apple is red ' ) in order to express a determinate proposition. We now have to introduce the notion of a quantifier, which is understood either as a mathematical function that takes predicates as a rg uments and returns truth -values (e.g . , ('Vx)(Fx) and (3x)(Fx ) , read as ' for all x , x is F' and 'for some x , x is F', c;; ID c )> z :::! .., 0 � 0 z respectively) , or as the main component of a quantified noun )> z 0 phrase that takes the place of a singular term in completing ;:: c an open sentence (e.g . , ' not all .. .' in ' not all apples', completing ' not all apples are red ' ; 'most...' i n ' most i ntegers', complet­ ing ' most integers aren't primes'; or even 'exactly four.. .', in 'exactly four planets', completing 'exactly four planets in the solar system are gaseous').306 The obvious way to understand 306. The standard account of quantifiers is called the ob}ectual interpretation (cf. J. Barwise and J. Etchemendy, Language Proof and Logic [Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999], part I I ) , because it treats variables as ranging directly over sets of objects. This is contrasted with the substitutional interpretation, in which variables ranges over sets of singular terms that purportedly refer to objects. rather than the objects themselves (cf. Making It Explicit, chapters 6-7; M. Lance, 'Quantification, Substitution, and Conceptual Content', Nous 30:4 (December 1996], 481-507; and J. Tomberlin, 'Objectual or Substitutional', Philosophical Issues vol. 8 [1997]. 151-67) . It is also sometimes contrasted with the interpretation of the quantifiers provided by free logic, which standardly uses two domains: an inner domain of existing objects and an outer domain of either non-existing objects or the singular terms that refer to them (cf. K. Lambert, 'The Philosophical Foundations of Free Logic', in Free Logic: Selected Essays [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003]) . However, as Lance shows, it's possible to reconstruct objectual quantification in substitutional terms (using substitution-inferential semantics as opposed to model-theoretic representational semantics), and as Tomberlin shows, Brandom's own way of doing this is essentially a variant of free logic. This shows that there are more !::< "1l r 0 --< -<

23s quantifiers is as devices for quantification, or for expressing the number of things in a given set that meets a certain cri- >­ f- 0 _j [)._ f­ _j :::0 :::; 0 z <( z 0 f­ <( 0 LL f­ z <( :::0 Cl w 0 z teria (e.g . , 'there are nine planets in the solar system', 'there are no u n icorns on earth', 'every electron has a negative charge', etc.). However, the best way to understand them is in terms of their role in binding the free variables of syntacti­ cally well formed formulas (e.g . , the quantifier (V.. ) binds . the variable x in the formula Fx 11 Gx to form the proposition ( Vx ) ( Fx 11 Gx ) ) , or in progressively completing open sentences by closing the grammatical openings left for singular terms (e.g . , the quantified noun phrase ' most apples' completing · ... are green and sharp' to form the grammatically complete sentence ' most apples are green and sharp' ) . w f­ Ul x w This al lows us t o d raw three overlapping d istinctions between types of predicates. Firstly, we can make our earlier distinction between monadic and relational predicates more precise, as we can see that some predicates contain more than one free variable/grammatical opening (e. g . , Fxy, or ' ... loves.. .') which can be bou nd/closed by different quantifiers (e.g. , ('Vx)(3y)(Fxy), or 'everybody loves somebody') even if they needn't be (e.g . , ('Vx)(Fxx) , or 'everybody loves themselves') .307 Secondly, we can i ntroduce the distinction between simple and complex predicates, or between predicates whose car responding formulas/open sentences contain nothing but free variables/openings (e.g . , Fx and Gxy, or ' ... is red ' and ... loves .. .' ) · and predicates whose corresponding formulas/sentences are composed out of simple predicates and logical operators (e.g . , complex interactions between the different interpretations of the quantifier than a simple threefold distinction might indicate. Nevertheless, I will remain neutral on these issues until specified otherwise. 307. See chapter 3.3.

Fx A Gx and �(Fxy A Fyx ) , or '. .. is green and sharp' and ' ... and... 239 don't love each other' ) . Finally, we can introduce the distinction between first-order and higher-order predicates, or between m x those predicates w hose variables can only take objects --< m z 0 m as their values (e.g . , Fx where x takes objects {a , b, c, ... }) and those predicates whose variables can also take lower­ order predicates as values (e.g . , Kcp where <p takes first-order predicates {F, G, H ... } ) . This is the founding gesture of type . theory, which distinguishes the types of values that free vari­ ables can have: either by being given a determinate value (e.g . , a for x in Fx: Fa) o r b y being bound to a determinate range of values (e.g . , {a , b, c, ... } for x in Fx: ('Vx)(Fx ) ) . This enables the generation of a type hierarchy, beginning with a primary type of objects that are not functions ( i ndividuals) and a secondary type of functions whose arguments are of the primary type (first-order predicates) and then recursively enumerating new types of functions ( higher-order predicates) whose arguments may be drawn from previously generated types.308 This means that we can treat an open sentence (e.g . , ... has an arrity of 2') · as a second-order predicate if its grammatical openings can be closed with the name of a first-order predicate (e.g 'the .• relation '... loves .. .' has an arrity of 2') or some suitable nominali­ sation thereof (e.g . , ' love is a two-place relation' ) . We will return to the importance of type theory as a strategy for dealing 308. There are a number of complexities involved in the formulation of type theories that I have deliberately glossed over in the above presentation (e.g .. the distinction between type and order necessitated by the ramification of types once relational predicates are considered, and the successor theories pro­ posed by Church and others) . For a detailed historical overview of these issues. beginning with Frege's hierarchy of concepts and its development in Russell and Whitehead's hierarchy of propositional functions. see W. Kneale, Develop­ ment of Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1962). 652-72; and C. Chihara, Ontol­ ogy ond the Vicious Circle Principle ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1973). (ii ID c )> z ::i � 0 '.=< 6 z )> z 0 ;:: c ':=< "U r 0 --< -<

240 with Russe l l 's paradox and other so-cal led i m p redicative definitions later. 309 >­ '::: For now, it is i m portant to explain why quantifiers a re Q_ not higher-order predicates in the sense just defined , even u ::i 5 though they are functions from predicates to truth-values. ::;: This is because quantifiers don't specify variable types: the :::J 0 z <( z 0 >= <( u u.. f­ z <( :::J CJ) w same quantifier (e.g . , ('V ... ) and ' most ...' ) can be used to bind free variables ranging over different types of values (e.g . , ('Vx)(Fx) and ('V<i>)(K<i>). and 'most mammals are quadru­ peds' and 'most simple predicates are monadic') . It is for this reason that first-order logic contains quantifiers even though it excludes second-order predicates: first-order quantifiers u z take fi rst-order predicates as their a rg u ments by binding f­ en x their first-order variables (x) , not by containing additional w w second-order free variables (<i>). The g ra mmatical distinc­ tion between quantifiers (e.g . , ' most .. .' ) and quantified noun phrases (e.g . , 'most mammals' and 'most simple predicates' ) makes this separation between quantifiers a n d variable types clear, i nsofar as the noun (e.g . , 'dog ' and 'simple predicate' ) that gets added to a quantifier to create a quantified noun phrase is needed to specify the types of values the variable ranges over. This point is crucial for u nderstanding Quine's defence of Russell and Frege from the instantiation objec­ tion. This is because their idea that existence is a second­ order predicate is often understood as meaning that it is 309. In explaining type theory as t h e classic solution t o these paradoxes. I am not thereby advocating the idea that it is the definitive solution. There has been much useful work done that tries to get beyond this approach (cf. 0. Linnebo. ' Plurals. Predicates. and Paradox: Towards a Type- Free Account', <http://semantics.univ-paris1.fr/pdf/ppp·description.pdf>: J.-Y. Girard ' Locus Solum: From the Rules of Logic to the Logic of Rules', <http://iml.univ-mrs. fr/-girard/0.ps.gz> ) .

equivalent to the existential quantifier (3 ... ). which appears to 2�1 conftict with the definition of 'second-order' just provided .310 Quine's defence of Frege and Russel l exploits the difference between first-order existential quantifiers and second-order predicates in order to show that grasping the meaning of the former is quite a different matter from grasping the meaning of the latter, such that . .. has an instance' need not be defined in • the same way as an ordinary second-order predicate. Although it is possible to use the existential quantifier to define exist­ ence predicates for both singular cases ( i .e., Ex = (3y)(x = y), m «: (/) _, m z (") m Ii) c )> z :::! 2) (") '.:; 6 z y) or 'there is something identical )> z 0 with fido' ) and general cases ( i .e . , Eq>= (3y)(q>y) , so that ;:: c so that Ea= (3y)(a = EF = (3y)(Fy) or 'there is something that is a dog ' ) , there is no more to understanding these predicates than understanding the syntactic role of the existential quantifier in binding the relevant first-order variables: ' To be assumed as an entity is, purely and simply, to be reckoned as the value of a variable.'311 It is also important to explain why understanding the syn­ tactic role of variable binding isn't just a matter of understand­ ing the existential quantifier, but quantification per se. We can show this simply by pointing out that the existential and universal quantifiers are interdefinable ( i .e., (3x)(Fx) = �(3x) �(Fx ) , which is t o say 'there is something that is a dog ' is equivalent to ' not everything is not a dog ' ; and ('Vx)(Fx) = �(3x)�(Fx) , which is to say 'everything is material' is equivalent to ' nothing isn't material ' ) . However, it is better shown by echoing Frege's famous claim that ' [a]ffirmation of existence is nothing but the 310. This conflict arises from the terminological differences between Frege's hierarchy of concepts (which quantifiers are internal to) and Russell's hierarchy of propositional functions (which quantifiers are external to) . 311. Quine, 'On What There Is', 13. � -u r 0 _, -<

242 denial of number nought'.312 This means that the existential quantifier is equivalent to the numerical quantifiers 'more than ,... f- 0 _J (L f­ _J :::> 2 0 z <( z 0 f­ <( 0 LL f­ z <( :::> Cl w 0 z w f­ (/J x w zero .. .' or 'at least one .. .' and as such demands nothing more than a practical grasp of counting. It is also important to explain that Quine adopts Russell's anti- Meinongian solution to the problem of negative singular existential claims (e.g . , �Ea , or ' Pegasus does not exist ' ) , namely, treating proper names (e.g . , the constant a , o r ' Pegasus') a s covert definite descriptions (e.g . , a unique descriptive predicate F, or 'the winged horse of Perseus' ) , so as to remove reference to objects that don't exist (e.g . , Ea= (3x)('1y)(Fx /\ (Fy --7 x = y)) and �Ea= �(3x)(Fx ) , or 'there is o n e a n d o n l y o n e winged horse o f Perseus' and 'there is no winged horse of Perseus' ) . Once both of these points a re recog nised we can see that Quine essentially defends Frege and Russell's explanation of existence in terms of i nstantiation by showing that there is nothing more to understanding instantiation than being able to count: if you know how to count individuals, then you know what it is for them to exist. We have now explained the logical foundations of Quine's account of ontological commitment , but there is still more to it than this. One way of bringing the remaining issues to l ight is by considering the claim that 'two out of three little pigs lost their houses to the big bad wolf'.313 There is an obvious sense in which this claim is true, and in which it is the result of an accurate counting procedure. It would make sense to ask a child who had been told the story of the three l ittle pigs ' how many of them lost their houses?' in order to test their counting 312. G. Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, tr. J. L. Austin (Oxford: Black­ wel l , 1950), 65. 313. No relation. See p. 29 n. 17.

ability, and to treat the above claim as a correct response. 2�3 However, this implies the claim that 'there are some l ittle pigs that lost their houses to the big bad wolf', which we are supposed to treat as synonymous with 'there exist l ittle pigs that lost their houses to the big bad wolf', and this seems to ontologically commit us to the existence of some well-known fictional pigs. Quine thus has to methodologically differentiate ontological commitment from mere existential commitment if he is to avoid including fictional pigs in his ontology. It is at this point that Quine i nvokes Occam . He claims that we are only ontologically committed to those entities that are explanatorily indispensable: meaning those entities that are within the range of the variables bound by the sentences composing our best scientific theories, once those theories have been translated so as to be as referentially frugal as possi­ ble. 314 We are thus not ontologically committed to the existence of fictional pigs, even though we can count them, because counting them makes no contribution to the natural-scientific enterprise. However, Quine never properly thematises and justi­ fies this restriction of ontological commitment to the natural sciences. Although he comprehensively articulates ontological conservatism from a naturalist perspective, he does not fully articulate this perspective. nor the reasons for adopting it. This uncritical naturalism is the untidy thread hanging from his account I alluded to earlier. To show why it is so unsatisfactory 31Li. For a comprehensive overview of just how referentially frugal Quine thinks we can be, see The Roots of Reference. It is worth pointing out that Quine rejects higher-order logic i n favour of set theory, meaning that he is committed to the numbers and sets ranged over by the first-order variables . of mathematical discourse as much as the concrete i ndividuals ranged over by the first-order variables of empirical discourse (x) . but is not committed to the existence of anything ranged over by supposedly second-order variables (cp) such as concepts, properties, etc. m x (f) _, m z 0 m I[) c )> z _, ,, 0 )> _, 6 z )> z 0 ;;;: c � " r::: Q _, -<

2�� it is necessary to return to the initial gesture that Quine makes in his dispute with Carnap: invoking the conceptual connection >­ fu _J Q_ f­ _J ::0 2 0 z « z 0 f­ « u LL f­ z « ::0 Cl LlJ u z LlJ r­ m x LlJ between 'what exists' and 'everything', or the link between ontological commitment and unrestricted quantification. To do this, it is necessary to explain what we mean by restricted quantification. On the standard interpretation of quantifiers, the bound variable ranges over a set of objects called the domain of quantification.315 This is na"fvely under­ stood as the set of everything that exists, or the unrestricted domain. To restrict this domain is to only allow the variable to range over some subset of the unrestricted domain (e.g . , the set of dogs that exist ) . I n practice, the vast majority of quantificational claims are restricted in some way, though these restrictions may be more or less explicit. For instance, when I say to my guests that 'there is no beer' I do not mean that all of the beer in the world has been consumed or otherwise eradicated ; I am implicitly restricting my claim from the domain of everything to that of those things in my house (which is a subset of everything ) , or even that of things in my fridge (which is a subset of things in my house) . This restriction can be made explicit by adding '. .. in my house' or '. .. i n my fridge' to the original quantificational claim. Conversely, when I say 'there is nothing in the fridge' I am not denying that there are shelves, stains, oxygen molecules, and even light in there: I am implicitly restricting my claim to food (or perhaps just safely edible food ) . We have already seen how this sort of restriction gets made explicit, by combining the quantifier (e.g . , 'no .. .' ) with a noun (e.g . , 'food ' ) to form a quantified noun phrase (e. g . , 'no food ' ) that specifies the range of the bound variable (e. g . , ' no food is in my fridge' ) . It is important to understand 315. This is the objectual interpretation mentioned i n p. 237 n . 306.

that quantifying with the noun 'thing' signals an absence of 2�5 explicit restrictions, meaning that the associated quantifier (e.g .. 'no .. .'. 'some .. .'. 'every.. .'. etc.) is either implicitly restricted (e.g .. 'there is nothing in the fridge') or explicitly unrestricted (e.g .. 'something exists'). It is with regard to this question of unrestricted quantifica­ tion that Quine's ontological conservatism and contemporary ontological liberalism cross paths: both take themselves to be entitled to the seemingly unrestricted claim that 'every­ thing exists'. though they disagree about its significance. The problem is providing a precise interpretation of what either side means when they make this claim; though the crucial difference between them lies in what they mean by 'everything', this difference cannot easily be made explicit. because one is implicitly restricted and the other is implicitly unrestricted. On the one hand , although Quine takes 'everything exists' to be a trivial claim. insofar as he defi nes existence (qua instantia­ tion) as belonging to the set of everything, he nevertheless wants to exclude some 'things' (e.g .. fictional pigs. round squares. universals, etc.) from this set . This indicates that his account of ontological commitment depends u pon an implicit restriction of 'everything' that he delegates to natu­ ral science. On the other hand, although ontological liberals take 'everything exists' to be a profound injunction. insofar as it indexes the ontological circumscription of the whole range of possible objects of thought in accordance with the noetic challenge to conservatism, they nevertheless experi­ ence difficulty defining 'thing' (or 'object') broadly enough to circumscribe 'everything' in the completely unrestricted sense. To appreciate this difficulty we must delve deeper into the logic of unrestricted quantification. m "° (/) -4 m z 0 m ri) c l> z ::! -n 0 l> -4 0 z l> z 0 ;;: c � 1l r::: 0 =i -<

2�6 Although it might seem that quantifying without any restric­ tions would be the most simple form of quantification, its >­ >-0 _J Q_ r­ _J :::0 ::;; 0 z <( z 0 >-­ <( 0 LL r­ z <( :::0 G w 0 z w r­ UJ x w possibility is a highly controversial topic in philosophical logic. The most famous problems for unrestricted quantification are posed by the set-theoretical paradoxes formulated by Cantor and Russell .316 Cantor's paradox shows that there cannot be a set of all sets (U) on pain of contradiction, because its cardinality (IUI) would have to both be lesser and greater than that of its power set (l'PUI): a power set-the set of all subsets of a given set-must always have a greater cardinal­ ity than its correspondi ng set (IUl<l'PUI), and a set must always have a cardinality greater than or equal to its subsets (l'PUI � IUl) .317 Russell's paradox constructs another seem­ ingly comprehensible set that cannot exist on pain of contra­ diction: the set of all sets that don't contain themselves (W), which contains itself if it doesn't contain itself (W fl W--'> WEW), and doesn't contain itself if it does (WEW-'>Wfi:.W ) . The general form of reasoning these paradoxes display rests upon impredicotive definitions, or functions defined in such a way that they can take themselves as arguments (e.g., Fx where F(Fx) is syntactically well formed ) . This is the same sort of problematic self-reference that lies behind the liar paradox 316. For a slightly less brief summary of these paradoxes, consult Glenn W. Er­ ickson and John A. Fossa's Dictionary of Paradoxes ( Lanham, MY: U niversity Press of America, 1998). For a thorough exposition cf. Kneale, The Develop­ ment of Logic, and Chihara. On the Vicious Circle Principle. 317. Cantor's paradox has become popular in recent Continental philosophy because of the work of Badiou. It has been appropriated by various other thinkers (e.g .. Meillassoux. Slavoj Z izek, Adrian Johnston) as evidence for the non-existence of the Whole. However. unlike Badiou , they tend not to explain how we are to deduce the nonexistence of a totality of entities as such from a claim about the totality of sets.

(e. g . , '... is false' where 'this sentence is false' is grammatical).318 2�7 Russell's theory of types was formu lated as a way of pre­ venting such paradoxes of self- reference by hierarchically segregating functions i nto orders whose variables can only range over types in the orders beneath them. One might o bject at this point that these paradoxes are concerned with sets and not 'things', and thus pose no problems for thinking about 'every thing' even if they cause problems for thinking about 'every set'. We can respond to this by pointing out that sets are wel l -defi ned objects of m x UJ _, m z 0 m (i) c )> z _, '1 0 )> _, 0 z mathematical thought. such that ontological liberalism ought )> z 0 to include whatever sets can be coherently specified within <:: c its comprehensive circumscription of what there is. However, � " r if 'everything' should thus contai n 'every set', then it seems Q that the set of everything (E) should include the set of all -< sets (U) as a subset (U E E) , and Cantor's paradox precludes this. Similarly, for the set of objects that constitutes any g iven domain of quantification (D). one can exploit the reasoning of Russell's paradox to construct a set that is not contained within it: the set of everything in D that doesn't contain itself ( R0 {x:x ED " x � x }) . This means that one can never define an = absolutely unrestricted domain, because the very act of defin­ ing it enables one to construct an object that is not present within it. and thereby to define a more expansive domain that includes it (E' = {x:x EE, Re}) .319 Once liberalism allows sets i n , sets o f things quickly get out o f hand. 318. Cf. Kneale, The Development of Logic. 319. For a detailed exploration of this move and its potential pitfalls. see K. Fine, ' Relatively Unrestricted Quantification' in A. Rayo and G. Uzquiano (eds) , Absolute Generality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) . _,

2�a One might further object that the problem is not with sets qua objects, but with the attem pt to circumscribe 'every- >­ f-u _J CL f-­ _J ::::> :::; 0 z <! thing' by means of a determinate set of objects over which z 0 f-­ <t u sense i n which it is concerned with a specific type of object 1.1- f-­ z <! ::::> CJ w u z w f-­ CJJ x w the bound variables of unrestricted quantifiers range. This objection is important, but we must be careful not to interpret it in a trivial manner: if one treats set theory as merely one mathematical formalism among others. so as to emphasise the (sets), rather than an attem pt to formalise thinki ng about collections of objects as such, then one has merely stipulated one's way out of the challenges it poses. One need not treat a given formalism as binding in order to see the significance of the problem that these paradoxes pose.320 They suggest that the capacity for self-reference (or the reflexivity of sense) is an internal obstacle to the circumscription of the totality of possible objects of thought demanded by the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism. Our ability to think about the very manner in which we think about objects (or to refer to senses) puts us in a position to generate an endlessly ramifying net­ work of new objects of thought, the delimitation of which only offers further opportunities for ramifying beyond those limits. The non-trivial form of the objection is that it is not merely the manner in which set theory articulates the idea of 'eve­ rything' as a determinate collection that is problematic, but the very notion that to think 'everything' is to think some determinate collection. However, it is possible to interpret the problematic feature of this notion either as reification or as 320. Whether one chooses to work within the confines of some form of type theory, a system that allows for a distinction between sets and classes such as Quine's New Foundations, or a typeless system such as 'pure' Zermelo- Fraen­ kel set theory, one has been forced to navigate the noetic obstacles thrown up by the possibility of self-reference.

de-absolutisation. So, one might hold that thinking 'everything' 2�9 as a collection treats it as an additional object we are both obliged to include within itself ( UEU) and permitted to use in constructing further objects (e.g. . PU and Ru) that cannot be so included. This interpretation of the objection seems to be favoured by ontological liberalism, which on this basis follows Badiou in denying the existence of anything like the Whole that could be thought as such .321 However. one might instead hold that thinking 'everything' as one collection among others prevents us from g rasping what differentiates it from all other such collections (e. g . , 'every dog ', 'every number'. etc.)-its unique absoluteness. This i nterpretation of the objection is m x (JJ --l m z () m () c )> z --l "T1 0 '.:'.< 6 z )> z 0 ;::: c suggested by Kant's positive account of existence: his dis­ � tinction between the appearance of spatio-temporal objects 0 :::j within experience and the pure forms of space and time through which they appear amounts to a distinction between the specific contents and the general structure of 'absolutely everything' in relation to which objects qua objects are defined (ontology) . Furthermore, this provides a way of demystifying the self-containment of 'everything ' : space and time appear within themselves insofar as they are coextensive with them­ selves. The spatio-temporal manifold need not appear as an object within a more expansive manifold. This distinction between the structure and contents of 'everything' is taken up and articulated by the early Heidegger, who uses it to thematise the connection between beings as 321. Markus Gabriel provides the clearest formulation of this objection and the liberal response to it. explicitly defending the idea that the totality of what exists is the only thing which does not exist ('The Meaning of "Existence" and the Contingency of Sense', in Speculations vol . IV [2013], <http://www.spec­ ulations-journal.org/storage/Gabriel _Meaning%20of%20Existence_Specula­ tions_IV. pdf> ) . "U r -<

250 such and beings as a whole that simultaneously defines and escapes the metaphysical tradition. This is the significance of >­ fu _J 0.. ;:: _J ::i ::;; 0 z <( z 0 ;:: <( u u.. f­ z <( ::i G w u z w f­ f/) x w his discussion of 'the Nothing' (das Nichts) and its relation to what he calls the fundamental question of metaphysics: 'Why is there something rather than nothing? '322 This discussion is famously ridiculed by Carnap, and taken to exemplify the way that seemingly profound but essentially vapid metaphysical theses can be derived from basic misunderstandings of the underlying logic of language.323 Explaining what Heidegger means and why Carnap's criticism is wrong is a good way of getting a grip on the difference between the reification and de-absolutisation objections to set-theoretical approaches to 'everything' and their relation to the ontological difference. To do this properly, it is necessary to frame the issue in terms of our discussion of quantificational restriction . Carry­ ing on the earlier example: in a more philosophical mood I am entirely capable of asking the question 'Why is there beer? ', and of making explicit its unrestricted scope (as opposed to 'Why is there beer in the fridge?') by saying 'Why is there beer rather than none?'. This kind of construction has two effects. Firstly, it contrasts the state of affairs for which we are demanding a reason (the existence of beer) with an alternative state of affairs that is prima facie possible (the non-existence of beer). Used l iterally, all the ' none' does here is to pick out a state of affairs in which there is some number of beers (zero) . We could ask very similar questions contrasting different states in which we varied this number (e.g . , 'Why are there two beers rather 322. Heidegger 'What is Metaphysics?' in Basic Writings; and Introduction to Metaphysics. 323. R. Carnap, 'The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language', in S. Sarkar (ed.), Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick. Carnap. and Neuroth (New York: Garland, 1996) , 10-31.

than three?', 'Why are there no beers rather than two?', etc.). 251 However. zero is the limit-case of the various possible states of affairs we can produce by varying the number of some kind of things. It is what we will call an empty state of affairs, or a nothing. We can contrast this limit-case with all non-empty states of affairs, i.e., those in which there are some of the kind of object in question, Secondly, it is an additional quirk of our language that this kind of contrast can be used to signal a lack of implicit restrictions on the quantifier (e. g . , ... i n my fridge', ' ... · in Saudi Arabia', ... that I like', etc.). When we combine these · m x Cf) .... m z 0 !" Ii) c :.. z ::::< "Tl 0 :.. .... 6 z two features in the case of the fundamental question, we see :.. z 0 that the qualification ' ... rather than nothing' makes explicit a s:: c possible state of affairs (there is nothing) to which the actual "ll � c:: state of affai rs (there is something) is contrasted , and the fact 0 that this is a unique limit-case (the limit-case of limit-cases) . -< The quantifier is not explicitly restricted , nor is it supposed to be implicitly restricted-it is explicitly completely unrestricted. The qualification thus forces us to think the absolutely empty state of affai rs, or the Nothing. Carnap's criticism of Heidegger works by treating his use of the singular term 'the Nothing' as naming a special meta­ physical object. and thus as internally inconsistent i nsofar as it impl ies that there is something after all. This reification of 'nothing' directly parallels the reification of 'everything' which ontological liberalism by necessity opposes. It is clear from our above explanation of the Nothing that Heidegger rejects any such reification. This rejection is the foundation of Heidegger's thesis that Being is Nothing: the fundamental q uestion of metaphysics enables us to think the structure of 'absolutely everything ' ( beings as a whole) as distinct from its contents ( beings) by identifying it with the structure of 'absolutely nothing' (the Nothing); this amounts to thi nking Being as =<

252 the unitary structure of beings as such and as a whole by understanding existence ( beings as such) as the content of >­ f- u _J Q_ f­ _J ::0 ::;; 0 z <( z 0 f­ <( u LL f­ z <( ::0 C!J w u z w f­ (/J x w this structure ( beings as a whole) .32� J ust as for Kant space and time do not appear as objects within themselves. so for Heidegger Being is not a being. but literally no-thing. This is the essential statement of the ontological difference between Being and beings that he takes to be elided by onto-theology.325 It is i mportant to emphasise that H eidegger does not transcend the bounds of logic in d rawing this connection between Being and Nothing, so much as slip the restraints of Carnap's preferred logic. This is clear if we consider another controversy in the philosophy of logic that their debate skirts: the problem of empty domains. Classical logic and most forms of predicate logic cannot allow the domains over which their variables range to be empty. Relatively empty states of affai rs ( nothings) are perfectly acceptable (e.g . , the cases where there is no beer, there are no unicorns. or there is nothing in the space between galaxies) insofar as they restrict the quantifier in some way, thus allowing there to be something in general despite there being nothing of a specific type or in a specific locale. But the absolutely empty state of affairs (the Nothing) is logically impermissible. The reason for this is that the truth conditions of the quantifiers are defined in terms of the way that the well formed formulas whose variables they bind are satisfied by objects in the domains they range over 324. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 2-3. 325. It is worth pointing out that the early Heidegger's project was essentially to provide an account of this structure within which beings appear as content (the worldhood of the world) in terms of the primordial temporality ( Temporal� itat) involved in Dasein's projection of a world . For a more thorough discussion of this project and its failure. consult chapters 4 and 5 of my The Question of Being.

(e.g . , (\fx)(Fx) is true iff every object in the domain {a , b, c , ... } 253 maps Fx to truth if taken as its value: Fa , F b , Fe, ... ), and this makes even self-evident propositions false when the domain is empty (e.g . , (\fx)(x = x) is false when there are no objects in the domain { } , or when the domain is 0) . This problem is rectified by free logics, which allow the intro­ duction of non-referring singular terms (e. g . , 'the present king of France', ' Pegasus', etc.) .326 Although not all free logics can handle empty domains, the only logics that can (so called universally free or inclusive logics) are free in this sense. They m x (/) --; m z 0 m I[) c )> z --; "Tl 0 )> --; 0 z do so by partially suspending Quine's bond between quantifi­ )> z 0 cation and existence: distinguish ing between quantifiers that ;;:: c can range over existents (e.g .. 'there are no little pigs who lost � OJ r their houses to the big bad wolf' and 'no unicorns have horns' ) , 0 and those that can also take non-referring singular terms (e.g . , -< 'two out o f three little pigs lost their houses to the big bad wolf' and 'a// unicorns have horns ' ) . This constitutes a distinction between the existential quantifier (3 ... ) and the particular quantifier (9 . ) by differentiating those uses of 'some .. .' that .. imply existence from those that don't. The crucial point is that, however the particular quantifier is defined (e.g., as taking both referring and non-referring singular terms, or as ranging over an outer domain that includes both existent and subsistent objects) , the corresponding existential quantifier. is defined by means of an inner domain that only contains existents: existence ( beings as such) is understood as the content of this domain structure ( beings as a whole) .327 326. See p. 237 n. 306. 327. The definition of existence predicates proceeds exactly as we discussed earlier (e.g . . Ex = ( 3y)(x = y)). The only difference is that Russell's theory of descriptions is not needed to parse its application to non-referring singular terms (e.g .. Ea= ( 3y)(a = y)). =<

254 It is on this basis that the possibility of an empty inner domain can be thought consistently. >­ f0 _J 0.. >= _J ::J ::; 0 z <{ z 0 Lest this be seen as simply one more detour into irrelevant logical theory, let us explicitly articulate its significance for thinking about the ontological difference. J ust as the set­ theoretical paradoxes of self-reference trace an ontological obstacle internal to the project of noetic circumscription, so do free logic's sundered quantifiers trace a noetic caesura � i nternal to the project of ontological circumscription. This LI. caesura is the manifestation of the ontological difference in 0 f­ z <{ ::J Cl> w thought: the singular difficulty of thinking beings as such and as a whole without thinking them in terms of some highest 0 z being (e.g . , God ) or some genus of beings (e.g. Ideas, subjects, f­ (/) x etc.), or of thinking their structure ( Being) as distinct from its w w content ( beings) . What this means is that. if we are to think beings comprehensively, then we must d raw a d istinction within thought between thinking about beings and thinking about Being. However, this distinction can be developed in two directions, depending on how one interprets the relation between noetic circumscription and ontological circumscrip­ tion. Ontological conservatism is in a position to distinguish between beings and objects of thought because it does not identify noetic and ontological circumscription. This means that it can distinguish between thinking about beings qua objects and thinking about Being qua object, and thus does not need to radically d issociate the latter from the former. This is not to say that this is what ontological conservatism does in practice: Quine refuses to fully thematise thinking about Being, and defers to whatever implicit grasp the natural sciences have upon it in practice. Ontological liberalism is forced to identify beings and objects because it folds noetic i nto ontological circumscription . This means that it must radically dissociate

thinking about beings quo objects from thinking about Being. 255 This is the significance of the later Heidegger's turn to poetry as a medium of thinking that escapes the objectifying power of literal discourse.328 We are now in a position to describe the ontological egali­ tarianism that binds ontological liberalism together: the con­ nection between the demand to account for all things and the demand to account for them equally. The de-absolutisation objection to treating 'everything' as a determinate collection opens u p the possi bil ity of defi n i ng existence i n terms of m x (/) _, m z (') m ID c )> z :::! -,, (') )> _, 0 z unrestricted quantification. This is because it identifies the )> z 0 whole to which the latter refers as a general structure whose :;:: c specific content is provided by existents. In aiming to provide a comprehensive account of beings as such by comprehensively defining beings as a whole, it grasps the equality of things by way of the totality of things. However, this is not egalitarian enough for ontological liberalism, because it refuses to treat whatever objects we can think beyond the bounds of this totality as things in their own right. By contrast, the reification objection to treating 'everything' as a determinate collection suggests the converse possibility of defi n i ng unrestricted quantification in terms of existence by treating the latter as the general structure of the objects of thought. In aiming to provide a comprehensive account of beings as a whole by 328. Cf. M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought. tr. A. Hofstadter ( N ew York: HarperCollins, 1981). It is worth pointing out that this puts the later Hei­ degger in the unique position of endorsing the de-absolutisation objection to the idea that beings as a whole can be grasped as a determinate collection (as opposed to the reification objection endorsed by most ontological liber­ als) while nevertheless refusing the conservative move of decoupling noetic circumscription from ontological circumscription. However, this is best under­ stood as the result of a more thorough annihilation of the distinction between the noetic and the ontological performed by the notion of Ereignis. r::j -0 r n _, -<

256 comprehensively defining beings as such, the objection grasps the totality of things by means of the equality of things. I n >­ >-­ u essence, ontological egalitarianism dismisses any attempt to _J define the whole as reifying it, because it insists on treating _J 0 whatever objects we can think beyond the bounds of any 2 0 z <!'. proposed totality as things i n their own right. By denying Q_ r­ existence to the Whole, the ontological egalitarian keeps their z 0 r­ <l'. u options perpetually open, enabling them to gesture towards LL the role of these gestures is purely negative-they strip r­ z <!'. 0 Cl w u z w >-­ (/) x w ever larger samples of myriad and mythical entities. However, away predicates often illicitly attached to Being (e.g . , not 'spatio-temporality' because we i nclude non-locatable things, not ' materiality' because we i nclude i mmaterial things, not ' persistence' because we include transitory things, etc.) -and there must be a corresponding positive account of Being. It is at this point that the need to radically dissociate thinking about Being from thinking about objects implied by the ontological difference becomes pressing . How are we supposed to think the equality of objects in a manner radically dissociated from thought about their differences? How are we to think their structure as radically alienated from their content? There are roughly two ways of approaching this question, but to understand them we must return to the logic of quantification one last time. There is a further objection to the possibility of absolutely unrestricted quantification that is quite different from those based on the set-theoretic paradoxes: that it only makes sense to quantify over a domain that is sortally restricted.329 This is a special form of restriction using what are cal led sorta/ predicates, and although there is some disagreement 329. This is the view adopted by Brandom in Making It Explicit (chapters 6-7) .

over precisely what these are, it is commonly accepted that 251 they are predicates that provide criteria of identification. For instance, the predicate '... is a natural number' is defined in such a way that we have a clear criterion for whether two natural numbers are identical : if they are located at the same point in the succession of numbers, then they are the same number (e.g . , if x is the successor of 2, then x = 3). The objection is then that it is impossible to count any kind of object without such a criterion of identity (e. g . , it makes no sense to ask 'how many instances of red are there in this street? ' unless m x (/) _, m z () m 0 c )> z _, ,, 0 )> _, 0 z one specifies that one is counting instances of red cars, red )> z 0 flashes of light, or red areas, etc.) .330 In natural languages, sortal <:: c restriction is performed by the noun added to the quantifier in composing a complete quantified noun phrase (e. g . , 'cars', 'flashes of l ight', or 'areas' in 'there are some ...that are red ' ) , but not a l l such nouns correspond t o sortal predicates (e.g . , ' food ' in 'there i s some food in my fridge' ) , because some do not specify a complete counting procedure. On the one hand, some nouns leave much of the counting procedure implicit (e.g . , it might be easy to determine that we've got 'some food ' rather than 'none', or 'enough food ' rather than ' not enough', but this doesn't mean that there are generic units of food that can be applied to both apples, oranges, and half-eaten tubs of yoghurt) . On the other, some nouns correspond to rigorous counting procedures with conventional units (e.g . , i t is easy to determine that we've got '10oml o f yoghurt', and that this is comparable to '10oml of water', but these generic units are conventional measurements of volume, not natural units of number) . 330. The same idea is approached from the opposite direction by Peter Geach, who famously claims that there is no absolute identity, only identity relative to a sortal predicate ( ' Identity', Review of Metaphysics 21 [1967]. 3-12.) r::; OJ r- Q _, -<

258 The idea behind this objection is similar to the idea behind type theory: the variables bound by quantifiers must always >­ r0 correspond to a specific range of values, and there simply _J is no way to specify a range that includes every possible _J value that could be specified , not only because we use these [)._ r­ ::0 2 0 z <( z 0 r­ <( 0 LL r­ z <( ::0 Cl w 0 z w r­ (/) x w specifications to produce new values that they don't include, but because they correspond to a whole plethora of more or less determinate counting practices that can be indefinitely elaborated . This implies that the nouns 'object' and 'thing' that we use to signal an absence of explicit restrictions do not for all that signal an explicit absence of restrictions. They do not correspond to a sortal predicate that provides some special procedure for counting everything we could possibly think of. They are pseudo-sortals, and they must always be implicitly restricted by some genuine sorta l . 331 The consequence of this objection is that the sort of thinking that is made explicit by quantificational logic cannot possibly provide a positive account of the Being of objects. Ontological liberalism essen­ tially embraces this consequence, albeit with variable levels of self-consciousness. The crucial point is that this provides it something to contrast its own form of thinking against, so as to clarify the methodological status of ontology. The differ­ ence between the two ways of approaching the methodologi ­ cal question lies in the way in which they contrast themselves with thinking that can be made explicit using quantifiers: Does ontology think something more than it, or something less? 331. Brandom, Making It Explicit. 437-8.

Il l . SUBT RACTION AND ALLUSION 259 This brings us to Badiou 's role in the emergence of ontological liberalism. Although Badiou 's work is not directly influential upon Harman in the same way as either the Austrian school or Latour, its influence upon Garcia. Gabriel. and Bogost332 is a synedoche of its influence upon the philosophical discourse as a whole, such that it indirectly enables the liberal paradigm of which Harman is the paragon. It is no secret that the primary motivation for Badiou 's philosophy is political. Even if politics is only one of philosophy's four conditions (along with art. science, and love) , it is clear that the principal contribution of Badiou's meta-ontology is its account of the emergence of subjects as instances of truth-procedures initiated in fidelity to an Event (l'evenement) that is 'trans- Being ' or undecid­ able in the context of the situation in which it emerges (e.g . . the French Revolution, Sophoclean tragedy, Cantorian set theory, an amorous encounter. etc . ) . and that this is specifi­ cally addressed to the problem of political agency.333 I raise this motivation not to make any critical comments about it or its consequences. but to explain Badiou's affinity to the anti­ reductionist challenge to ontological conservatism.334 We have already noted that Bad iou follows H usserl i n sublimating t h e noetic challenge in his study o f t h e logic of appearance, transforming the task of circumscribing the full range of possible objects of thought into an exploration of the Logics of Worlds within which these objects appear. This is 332. Cf. I . Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006). 333. See P. Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth ( M inneapolis, MN: U niversity of Minnesota Press, 2003). 334 . I owe this point to Ray Brassier. (f) c OJ _, ;o l> 0 _, 6 z l> z 0 l> r r c (f) 6 z

260 strictly different from ontology for him, but it remains close enough to the ontology of the liberal paradigm that one can see z 0 (/) ::i the affinity between them.335 However. one cannot appreciate <( 0 z <( z 0 f0 <( 0:: f"' ::i (/) a result of his commitment to an account of political agency _J _J Badiou's proximity to anti-reductionism without seeing it as that is strictly irreducible to the economic, sociological, and biological dimensions upon which it is predicated . Though he is an avowed 'materialist' in the Marxist tradition, his rejection of the principle of sufficient reason in order to secure the trans­ ontological supplement provided by the Event should indicate the extent of his anti-reductionism. His category-theoretical phenomenology should thus be seen as the noetic counterpart to this ontological anti-reductionism, providing a basis for the detailed circumscri ption of the political life-worlds within which political agency can emerge. Given this, the most important thing to understand about Badiou 's philosophy is that he understands and embraces the sortal objection to unrestricted quantification more thor­ oughly than anyone. Badiou's rejection of substance as unity is essentially a rejection of the idea that there are natural units: nothing is one until it is counted-as-one, or until it appears as an object within the quantificational domain specificied by a particular counting procedure. This explains his rejection of type theory, insofar as the hierarchy of types must always beg i n with a primitive type of natural u nits (objects) that can be unproblematically quantified over. It also explains why he retains Kant's use of the term 'object' to designate what appears (units) . as opposed to what is (multiples without u nits) . However, this means that ontology cannot be the 335. It is that part of Badiou 's work that could be legitimately described as 'object-oriented'.

study of objects qua objects. As we have already explained . 251 that is the province of phenomenology, or the study of the transcendental structures within which objects can appear as self-identical (i.e. worlds as domains of quantification ) . The province of ontology is the study of what is counted-as-one before it is unified by the count. or multiplicity qua multiplicity. This explains Badiou 's choice of Zermelo-Fraenkel (ZF) set theory over type theory, insofar as the former quantifies over sets without supposing that these sets must be composed by things that are not themselves sets. H is meta-ontological identification of mathematics and ontology is more precisely the claim that ZF set theory is ontology. It is important to understand why the thesis that math­ ematics is ontology cannot be articulated within the austere realm of mathematical i nscription. For Badiou . mathematics does not think about objects-there strictly are no mathemati­ cal objects, but only a deductive practice that methodically (albeit sometimes brilliantly) extrapolates the consequences of an i nitial decision regarding axioms. However. it is this very austerity that enables mathematics to inscribe Being : [ B]eing qua [ B]eing does not in any manner let itself be approached, but solely allows itself to be sutured in its void to the brutality of a deductive consistency without aura. Being does not diffuse itself in rhythm and image, it does not reign over metaphor, it is the null sovereign of inference. 336 This is the essence of Badiou 's concept of subtractive ontol­ ogy: mathematics can dissociate the structure of multiplicity (Being) from its apparent contents (objects) by quantifying 336. Badiou, Being and Event, 10. (/) c OJ __, :u :i> 0 __, 0 z :i> z 0 :i> r r c (/) 0 z

262 over nothing but Nothing itself (0) and whatever multiplici­ ties can be constructed out of it ( i .e . , {0} , {0, {0}} , {0, {0} , z 0 rJ) ::i _J _J <( 0 z <( z 0 f:: (.) <( a:: f­ <D ::i rJ) {0. {0}}} . etc.).337 Badiou fundamentally sunders Heidegger's claim that Being is Nothing by refusing to identify the Noth­ ing and the Whole qua Whole. I n contrast to Heidegger's claim that the Nothing qua Whole does not exist (the de­ absolutisation objection ) , he claims that the Whole qua set of all sets does not exist (the reification objection ) , but that the Nothing qua Void exists as the sole index of existence (0 as the name of Being ) . This scission marks his retreat from the strong correlationism of H usserl and Heidegger to one even weaker than that of Kant-a retreat that is simultaneously a consolidation and radicalisation of Kant's own subtractive gesture: it converts the thing-in- itself as external limit of empirical knowledge into the Void as internal limit of math­ ematical knowledge.338 Badiou 's subtractive ontology u ncovers the structure of beings qua beings by taking the objects that constitute the content of thought and stripping them of every possible predicate-and thereby even their objectivity-leaving noth­ ing but multiplicities without unity. However, he refuses to explicitly define multiplicities as such. because this would be to treat . . . is a set' as one more sortal predicate by means of · 337. This is the consequence of Zermelo's axiom schema of separation, which limits the scope of the operation of abstraction through which sets are con­ structed to sets that already exist, combined with the axiom of the Void which stipulates the existence of the empty set as a fixed point from which other sets can be constructed (Being and Event. §3 and §5). 338. Cf. Badiou, ' Kant's Subtractive Ontology', in Theoretical Writings; and the introduction to Being and Event. This might be seen as Badiou's math­ ematical synthesis of Kant and Lacan, insofar as he has always identified the Void with the Lacanian Real, or thought's constitutive impossibility.

which to count objects. Badiou navigates the noetic caesura of 263 ontological difference by implicitly defining sets (and thereby beings) in terms of the membership relation between them and their elements ( ...E... ): instead of stating what sets are, he demonstrates what set membership implies. This reveals an interesting parallel between Badiou and Quine: whereas Badiou implicitly defines beings as such by indexing them to the axioms of ZF set theory and the mathematical practice founded upon them. Quine implicitly defines beings as a whole by indexing them to the parsimonious syntactic reformulation of our theories about the world and the natural-scientific prac­ tice it is founded upon. Both take a subtractive approach that dissociates thought about Being from thought about objects by harnessing the power of formalism (ZF set theory/first­ order quantificational logic) against positive definition , but they approach it from opposite directions (as such --7 as a whole/as a whole --7 as such) . Both secure the implicitness of Being by deferring its content to a choice ( between axioms/between explanations) that they delegate to another form of thought (mathematics/natu ral science) , but they thereby foreclose the conditions under which that choice is made to philosophi­ cal reflection: whereas Badiou ignores issues regarding the semantics of quantifiers that determine the space of pos­ sible mathematical axioms,339 Quine ignores issues regarding 339. It is important to understand that axiomatics has been gradually super­ seded by semantics in the history of mathematical logic, insofar as the latter represents an attempt to map the use of the relevant terms (e.g . , connectives, quantifiers. modal operators. etc.) onto other mathematical structures (e.g . . models. proof structures. strategies, etc.) that explain t h e range o f choices be­ tween axioms encoding their inferential behaviour (e.g .. mapping modal opera­ tors to sets of possible worlds so as to explain axiom choice [K. S4, S5. etc.] in terms of the algebraic properties of the accessibility relation between worlds) . Understood in this way, axiomatic set theory represents the last bastion of en c OJ -; Al )> 0 -; Ci z )> z 0 )> r r c en Ci z

264 the semantics of causal explanation that determine the space of possible scientific theories.340 However, despite this, their z 0 (/) ::i _J _J <( 0 z <( z 0 i= (.) <( n:: f­ ID ::i (/) subtractive methodologies do effectively circumscribe what remains implicit in their meta-ontologies.341 We must now explain the alternative to subtraction, which takes thought about Being to access something more than thought about objects, rather than something Jess. Badiou provides an eloquent description of the way this alternative appears in Heidegger's later work: Heidegger still remains enslaved , even in the doctrine of the withdrawal and the un-veiling, to what I consider, for my part. to be the essence of metaphysics: that is. the figure of [ B]eing as endowment and gift , as presence and opening, and the figure of ontology as the offering of a trajectory of proximity. I will call this type of ontology poetic; ontology haunted by the dissipa­ tion of Presence and the loss of origin [ ... ] For poetic ontology, which-like history-finds itself in an impasse of an excess of presence, one in which [ B]eing conceals itself, it is necessary to substitute a mathematical ontology, in which dis"qualification and unpresentation are realised through writing. 342 axiomatics against semantics. which should ultimately replace it with a com­ plete semantics of quantifiers ( incorporating plural and predicate quantifiers). The main reason this is often overlooked is that the dominant semantic para­ digm for analysing other forms of logical vocabulary ( model theory) is founded upon axiomatic set theory, so that the standard semantics of generalised quan­ tifiers turns in a tiny explanatory circle. 340. See my Essay an Transcendental Realism. 341. It is curious that this word is entirely appropriate to both Quine and Badiou here. 342. Badiou. Being and Event. 9-10.

Although the later Heidegger no longer thinks that there can 265 be an account of Being (Sein) outside of its particular historical manifestations (e.g . , Physis, Logos. Hen. Idea, Energeia, Substantiality, Objectivity, Subjectivity, the Will, the Will to Power. the Will to Will, etc.) much as Badiou thinks that there is no objectivity outside of its manifestations within particular worlds, he nevertheless thinks that there can be an account of the singular structure (Seyn!Ereignis) through which these epochs come about. Heidegger's poetic ontology aims to think this structure by means of the noetic supplement that poetry provides to literal discourse, as opposed to the noetic remain­ der that formalism subtracts from it.3�3 This is the poetic mirror image of Quine's subtractive methodology: it aims to say what little can be said about beings ( beings as such) by appealing to the unitary structure that withdraws behind every particular attempt to grasp them ( beings as a whole) in a manner that can never become fully explicit. We are now in a position to precisely articulate the prox­ imity between Badiou and the ontological liberalism of which 000 is the exemplar. If Heidegger's historical poeticism is the mirror image of Quine's subtractive naturalism. then ontological liberalism is the shattered mirror reflecting jagged fragments of Badiou's subtractive mathesis. Without the formal anchor provided by the deductive suture of the Void, the project of encapsulating 'everything' ( beings as a whole) by means of a poetics of 'objects' ( beings as such) fractures along metaphoric lines. The attempt to navigate the noetic caesura of ontologi ­ c a l difference b y transcending t h e expressive constraints of 3"13. The term 'poetic ontology' conflicts with my earlier characterisation of Heidegger as rejecting 'ontology' in describing his later project, but I think the term is useful enough to adopt as long as this conflict is borne in mind. (fJ c OJ � ;;o }> (') � 0 z }> z 0 }> r r c (fJ 0 z

266 literal discourse inevitably turns to metaphor as its means of transcendence. We have seen this in the way in which Harman z 0 (/) :J _J _J <t 0 z <t z 0 r0 <t °' rm :J (/) overcomes the gap between phenomenology and metaphys­ ics not merely through the tactical use of metaphors to leap from phenomenological to metaphysical chains of reasoning and back again, but through the strategic use of metaphor in methodologically founding his metaphysics upon allusion. It is easy enough to see the tactical use of metaphor as a common theme in ontological liberalism, but it is important to see that this strategic move is what binds it together. The strategy is presented casually but revealingly by Ian Bogost in Alien Phenomenology: In short. all things equally exist. yet they do not exist equally. The funeral pyre is not the same as the aardvark: the porceletta shell is not equivalent to the rugby bal l . Not only is neither pair reducible to human encounter, but also neither is reducible to the other [ ... ] This maxim may seem like a tautology-or just a gag. It's certainly not the sort of qualified, reasoned, hand-wrung ontological position that's customary in philosophy. But such an extreme take is required for the curious garden of things to fiower. Consider it a thought experiment, as all speculation must be: what if we shed all criteria whatsoever and simply hold that everything exists, even things that don't? 344 Here we see ontolog ical l iberalism in its most i nnocuous form: don't worry that 'everyth i ng exists' is literally a tau­ tology, because it is required for figurative goals ( ' for the curious garden of things to flower' ) ; don't worry that it isn't 34 4 . I . Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, or What it's Like to Be o Thing ( M in­ neapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2012), 11.

philosophically precise, because it is a speculative experiment 2s1 in imprecision ( 'everything exists, even things that don't' ) . It is precisely insofar as it is bound together by a commitment to figuration (allusion) rather than formalism (subtraction) that ontological liberalism fractures itself: the strategic use of metaphor inevitably splinters into a multitude of metaphorical strategies.345 These strategies may borrow from, intersect. and overlap with one another, but. in the absence of formal devices for indexing and delimiting what is implicit in them (e.g . , set theory or first-order logic) let alone making it explicit ( i .e .. in literal discourse) , they are little more than an expressive patchwork of resonant metaphors held together by a common pool of rhetorical devices (e.g . , 'everything exists', 'the Whole does not exist', and the increasingly bizarre lists of things that flank them ) . We can see this complicity between metaphor and rhetoric in Harman's version of the reification objection, which rejects the existence of the Whole qua holism by strategically allud­ ing to the reality of multiplicity by means of its appearance. This strategy is realised less by a litany of expressive tactics than by the expression of tactical litanies - the deeper truth 3<15. Once again, Markus Gabriel presents perhaps the clearest example of this logic at work. even if he does not articulate it himself (cf. Transcendental Ontology, ' Introduction' ; and The M eaning of " Existence" and the Metaphys­ ics of Sense') . His transcendental ontology rejects the possibility of provid­ ing a general formalisation of the ' fields of sense' within which 'objects' are defined as appearing, because it accounts for metaphors as specific fields of sense that resist such formalisation. It is then reduced to using formalism as a metaphor. which conveniently allows Gabriel to pick and choose between those features he takes to allude to important metaphysical truths (e.g .. Can­ tor's and Russell's paradoxes) and those that he can dismiss as mere preci­ sion for precision's sake (e.g .. the need for a precise equivalent of the axiom of extensionality for fields of sense. if they are to analogically inherit these extensional paradoxes) . (/) c OJ � :0 )> (') � 6 z )> z 0 )> r r c (/) 6 z

26s about objects to which metaphysics refers is secured by referencing and rhetorically ramifying the superficial diaspora z 0 (/) :::> _J _J -0: 0 z -0: z 0 f­ () -0: n: f­ CD :::> (/) of non-metaphysical sense: pupils and Popeye; muons and moods; the holy spirit and flatulence; Zimbabwe and lambda functions; misogyny and melanomas; klingons and car crashes; lists of lovers and lovers of lists; spells and spookiness; Being, time and Being and Time; the Big Mac™ and the empty set (0) ; The Big Bang and The Homosexual Agenda; Proustian experiences and Cthulhu; the best of all possible worlds and the perfect sandwich ; boredom and Boris Johnson's famous haircut; Microsoft and M inesweeper; Bruno Latour and Latour litanies; true contradictions and false tautologies; evil and Elvis; something that cannot be referred to in this list and everything else that can ; GOdel 's famous theorems and his infamous paranoiac fantasies; qualia and quiche; whatever I am currently alluding to and the sublime excess over our col­ lective imagination thereby invoked ; transfinite sets and the slow, creeping, horrific, but nevertheless inevitable and in truth almost Lovecraftian realisation that none of us understand the implications of their usefulness in mathematical practice; ambiguity and aubergines; lists of ( lists of ( lists of [ ... ] ) ) and the uncomfortable reflexivity of this phrase; the dawning realisation that litanies such as this one are at best rhetorically grandiose and at worst cognitive anaesthetics with performative preten­ sions, and the corresponding hope that they will fade from the pages of history like an exhausted simile.346 Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that. while this alliance of strategic metaphor and tactical rhetoric is insuf­ ficient. there is always more to ontological liberalism than mere metaphor and rhetoric. If there were no explicit metaphysical 3"16. To this list I add, for the sake of Benedict Singleton, 'your mum'.

supplement, then there could be no useful metaphysical debate 269 between it and other such positions, much as there can be no such debate with the later Heidegger's anti-metaphysical position. The problem is that its explicit metaphysics is always in conflict with the implicit metaphorics it is founded upon. The demand for a positive concept of 'object' sufficient to encapsulate an expressive allusion to 'everything' requires that we curtail the expressive power of this metaphorics to allude to objects that don't fit the concept . The conflict between metaphysics and metaphorics can only ever resolve itself in the form of a representational blockage. In Harman's work, the principal site of this conflict is the temporal underpinnings of his renewed concept of substance. This conflict and the resulting temporal blockage is perfectly articulated by Tristan Garcia in contrasting his own work with Harman's OOP: Time is a tribunal deciding between a theory that treats eve­ rything as equal objects. but transforms these objects into purely formal things. and a theory that treats its objects as objects. but excludes some things and transforms them into secondary objects. I choose a path that leads me to treat no-matter-what as a thing and to explode the spatio-temporal constraints in order to define a formal system [ ... ] But there is a price to pay. My thing hardly has anything to do with objects of common sense or at least the objects that 'object-oriented ontologies' would like to account for. No � matter-what being something, my thing is too formal: each instance of something, each event. and each part of each thing are so many things. And in this way, my thing slips through my fingers. My world is populated not only with football teams. words, ghosts, falsities. golden mountains, and (/) c [JJ _, ;u )> 0 _, 0 z )> z 0 )> r r c (/) 0 z

270 square circles, but also and above all parts of ghost fingers. parts of parts, and parts of these parts at any time t, and in the z 0 (/) :::> _J _J ..: 0 z ..: z 0 >= u ..: 0: f­ Ol :::> (/) following moment. and the hundred moments before, and ten seconds before that [ ... ] On the other hand, Harman chooses to remain at the level of objects and not to break with the common sense notion of objects. that is. spatio-temporal identifiable and re-identifiable entities. In this way, his objects are more concrete, more easily discernible. The price to pay for his ontology is that it presupposes time and space as specific constraints, internal to the object [ ... ] He borrows from the classical model of sub­ stantiality and endows it with an innovative meaning. Internally, his model is strengthened by space and time. But in this way, he gives up considering many things like full-fledged objects. 347 Despite the fact that we can think the temporal parts of objects (e.g . , a person as i nfant and as adult) as distinct from the temporally enduring objects they compose (e.g . . t h e person who was once an i nfant and i s now an adult ) , Harman refuses t o count them a s distinct objects. Although he diverges from classical substance theorists by i nsisting that fleeting occurrences and events (e.g .. a birth, a death, a gamma ray burst, etc.) can be thought as substances in their own right. he nevertheless refuses to allow the division of substances into discrete temporal events. I n essence, Har­ man diverges from Badiou, Garcia, and Gabriel by refusing to take the noetic challenge to its extreme-his unthematised dependence u pon deep time curtails the representational dimension of his ontological egalitarianism. 347. Garcia, 'Crossing Ways of Thinking'. 9-10. It is worth noting that Harman concurs with this analysis of the difference between his and Garcia's work ('Tristan Garcia and the Thing-in-itself'. in Parrhesia 16 [2013 ] ) .

This temporal blockage is peculiar to Harman (and 000 to 271 a lesser extent) ,3'16 yet the self-limiting character of the alliance between metaphysics and metaphorics makes similar blockages in other strands of ontological liberalism i nevitable. en c OJ -< ;u l> Subtractive ontology may leave too much unsaid, but allusive (') -< ontology tries to say too much-to say the unsayab/e-and z l> z 0 l> becomes tangled in its own ambitions. It is a cautionary exam­ ple of the importance of recognising the difference between meaningful ness and the experience of meaningfulness, or between genuine profu ndity and the affect of edification. Badiou provides the best account of the dangers of confusing philosophical insight and poetic allusion: Now, to abandon the rational mathematical paradigm is fatal for philosophy, which then turns into a failed poem. And to return to objectivity is fatal for the poem, which then turns into didactic poetry, a poetry lost in philosophy [ ... ] Let us struggle then. partitioned, split, unreconciled. Let us struggle for the flash of conflict, we philosophers. always torn between the mathematical norm of literal transparency and the poetic norm of singularity and presence. Let us struggle then. but having recognized the common task. which is to think what is unthinkable, to say what is impossible to say. Or, to adopt Mallarme's imperative, which I believe is common to philosophy and poetry: There, wherever it may be, deny the unsayable-it lies.' 3'19 348. It is certainly present in Levi Bryant's processual fork of 000 i n The Democracy of Objects (Ann Arbor. M l : Open Humanities Press. 2011). but Bry­ ant's subsequent reversion to a more classical materialism (under the heading of 'ma.c hine-oriented ontology' or MOO) seems to abandon the noetic chal­ lenge to ontological conservatism in favour of a more Deleuzian anti-reduc­ tionism, which would suggest that he has abandoned the radical ontological egalitarianism characteristic of the rest of 000. 349. Badiou. ' Language. Thought. Poetry' in Theoretical Writings, 233-41. 0 r r c en 0 z

272 We need not follow Badiou in his attempt to mathematically trace the edges of the unsayable to agree that philosophy >­ z 0 ::;; (f) Cl'. <( Q_ 0 z <( (f) "' Cl'. 0 cannot but lose itself in the attempt to transgress these limits: the methodological foundation of allusive ontology is built on the shifting sands of i nsincerity. IV. EXPL ANATION, NETWO R KS, AND PA R S IMONY :;;: f­ w z What lesson should we learn from all this? I think that we must realise that o ntology- both in the sense of defining z 0 ontological commitment in general ( meta-ontology) and that !;;: of articulating our specific ontological commitments (applied z <( _J Q_ x w ontology) -has an important representational function, and that this function should be understood in terms of its epis­ temological role in our practices of explanation . This is the essential truth revealed by the way 'ontology' is approached by both natural and informational science: there is a practical need to organise the systems of reference through which we index and identify both the explanandum of our theories and their explanans.350 There is a connection here with type theory, which is an attempt to formally circumscribe mathematical reference by means of a system of variable types. but is sometimes misunderstood as an attempt to formally circum­ scribe reference as such. This is a misunderstanding because, although there is a primitive type of non-mathematical objects, it does not distinguish between non-mathematical types. We can see that the interface between the explanatory tools that mathematics provides and the non-mathematical domains i n which they are applied is provided by the more or less implicit counting procedures corresponding to interconnected 350. See p. 233 n. 298.

systems of predicates: including sortal predicates (e.g . , [dog � 213 mammal � animal ] . (flathead � screwdriver � tool ] , [network interface � daemon � program], etc.) and quasi -sortal predi­ cates (e.g . , [electron � lepton � fermion] ,351 [gouda � cheese � food ] , [water � liquid � volume] , etc.). This reveals a similar insight u nderlying H usserl's phenomenolog ical sublimation m x 'U r l> z '.::; 6 z and Badiou's subsequent category-theoretical reorientation z m _, of the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism. Though :;; 0 their respective suppression and suturing of existence obvi­ !" ;u ;>; ates anything like a global set of ontological commitments l> z 0 (metaphysica specialis) , their attempts to internally delimit the � phenomena-logical structure of d ifferent domains of objects ( regions/worlds) should be seen as performing the crucial epistemological role of organising reference within the areas of theory and practice that correspond to those domains (e. g . , computer science, sociology, and anatomy, along with database design, social organising, and forensics) . Moreover, Badiou sees this precisely as a matter of articulating the logical regi mes of counting procedures within which objects can appear as units. In essence, they aim to facilitate intra­ disciplinary organisation, even if they thereby preclude inter­ d isciplinary organisation . · How exactly does the appeal to metaphor undermine this representational function ? It is best to approach this question from the opposite direction, and explain how meta­ phors can contribute to the systematisation of reference within given domains.352 This means saying something about 351. These predicates are quasi-sortal for the reasons pointed out by Lady­ man and Ross: they permit the counting of particles but not their absolute individuation (see Every Thing Must Go, §§3.1-3.2) . 352. This amounts to giving something like an account of how metaphors compose ' fields of sense' in Gabriel's terms (see p. 267 n. 345). . ;u e'.' s:: 0 z -<

21� how metaphors enable semantic grafting between sortal and quasi-sortal pred icates. without getting too deep into the >­ z 0 ::;; en "' � D.. 0 z � en "' "' 0 ;;: f­ UJ z z 0 ;::: � z � _J D.. x UJ corresponding semantics of singular terms.353 This might best be described as referential transport, or the transposition of counting procedures and the referential infrastructure they implement from one system of predicates to another. For example, by describing musical genres as 'families' we can begin to describe their subgenres and the artists that compose them in terms of ' l i neages', and to refer to them on this basis (e.g .. 'the father of free jazz', 'the children of blues and rock music', etc.) and even to anticipate their as yet nonexistent 'progeny' (e.g .. 'the descendants of the union of progressive rock and contemporary folk music' ) . The metaphors underlying referential transport can be transformed into analogies in the same manner as other metaphors, by precisely delimiting the relations between objects that are transposed from one domain to another (e.g .. '. .. is father of...', '. .. descends from the union of ... and .. .', etc . ) . These analogies can even become systems of predicates in their own right. potentially constituting relatively autonomous domains of objects. For example, the metaphor of corporate personhood has developed from a suggestive way to look at group enterprises through multiple iterations of analogi­ cal pruning into a constitutive legal framework for individuating corporations and managing their rights and responsibilities. Alternatively, relevant metaphors can remain inchoate, providing a reservoir of conceptual resources for organising and extending our referential capabilities within a given domain: for example, Wilfrid Sellars's famous metaphor of 'the space 353. For my earlier explanation of the concept of semantic grafting, see chap­ ter 3.1. subsection IV. For a more detailed discussion of the semantics of singu­ lar terms. see Brandom (Making It Explicit, chapters. 6 and 7).

of reasons', which l icenses more or less open-ended transport 215 from the geometric/topological domain to the logical/d iscursive domain (e. g . , 'concepts in the same neighbourhood as . . .', 'the inferential maps one needs to navigate . . .', etc . ) . It is this ability of inchoate metaphors to perpetually extend the range of possible objects we can refer to by licensing new referential transports that undermines the representational function of any ontology founded upon them-the dissemination of sense prevents the organisation of reference. However, this problem with metaphors reveals a deeper problem with the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism: the egal itarian d rive to ontologically encapsulate every possible object of thought is incompatible with the epistemological demand to ontologically organise thought by articulating a fixed referential framework. One necessitates ontological expansion while the other neces­ sitates ontological contraction. This tension can only be kept at bay by binding the epistemological demand within the domains themselves. refining and reorganising their internal referential systems. while freeing the egalitarian d rive to roam between domains. generating new and stranger modes of reference. This differs from Husserl and Badiou 's patchwork of regions and worlds only insofar as its insistence on real ity over appearance (metaphysica specia/is over phenomena-logic) requires that thought's referential profligacy is metaphysically significant. It is this space between domains of objects. and the hierarchical and transversal explanatory connections it ena­ bles between them (e.g . . reducing the domain of chemistry to the domain of physics, or explaining changes in artistic domains through interactions between economic, sociological. and psychological domains) . with which the anti-reductionist challenge to ontological conservatism is concerned . This is because reductionism as an ontological schema is essentially m x '1J r l> z l> _, 0 z z m _, "" 0 JJ =>" (/) l> z 0 '1J l> JJ (/) ;;: 0 z -<

276 a representational paradigm for organising reference glob­ ally ( between domains) , rather than locally (within domains) . >­ z 0 ::; (/) Cl'. <{ 0.. 0 z <{ (/) "' Cl'. 0 5: 1w z z 0 ,_ <{ z <{ -' 0.. x w The challenge to reductionism must thus be formulated at this global level (as being concerned with 'everything ' ) . This enables us to explain the difference between the methodo­ logical ( Latour) and metaphysical ( Deleuze) forms of anti­ reductionism outlined at the beginning of this chapter. However, the names I have given to these two strands might seem counterintuitive, so it is important to explain why I have chosen them. The reason for this counter-i ntuitive character is that Harman's engagement with Latour consists in treati ng his methodology (ANT) as a metaphysics (000) . This engagement has been a dialogue, and Latour has i n many ways embraced Harman's reframing o f explicitly meth­ odological issues as implicitly metaphysical ones.354 However, this reframing is only possible on the basis of something like a shared commitment to the noetic challenge to ontological conservatism. This is to say that methodological issues regard­ ing the organisation of explanatorily transversal reference are converted i nto metaphysical ones by treating the senses that determine these references as entities in their own right (e.g . , sensual objects, fictions, theories, etc . ) . This solves the relevant methodological issues by subsuming sense within ontology, rather than using ontology as a means to organise reference. The former strategy ( Latour/ANT/000) is merely methodological because it disarticulates the functional role of ontology in mediating between explanation and representation; whereas the latter strategy ( Deleuze/ Delanda/emergent­ ism) is properly metaphysical because it proposes a genuine 354 . Cf. The Prince and the Waif (Winchester: Zero Books, 2011) and An In­ quiry into Modes af Existence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

alternative to the ontological schema of reduction-namely, 277 emergence-and thereby provides an alternative global representational paradigm.355 To understand this contrast between Latourian methodo­ logical anti-reductionism and metaphysical emergentism we must return to Latour's anthropological bracketing of d iffer­ m x "1l r > z � 6 z z ences between epistemic activities, because his account of m -i transversal explanation is fundamentally motivated by his own 0 work in the anthropology of science.356 It is because Latour has a specific i nterest in representing science as a domain of objects (e.g . , experiments, theories, paradigms, etc, qua explanandum) to be explained in terms of its relations to other domains of objects (e.g . , experimental equipment. the referents of theories, the sociological environment of paradigms, etc . , qua exp/anons) that he ends up disarticulating t h e general relation between explanation and representation encoded by ontology. This d isarticulation can be seen most clearly in his theory of circulating reference, which he introduces by describing a device that scientific researchers use for storing, organising. and comparing soil samples: [T]he pedocomparator will help us grasp the practical difference between abstract and concrete. sign and furniture. With its handle, its wooden frame. its padding . and its - cardboard, the pedocomparator belongs to "things.'' but in the regularity of its cubes, their disposition in columns and rows. their discrete character, and the possibility of freely substituting one column 355. See Stewart and Cohen. The Collapse of Chaos for a thorough discus­ sion of what this alternative paradigm involves, especially their notions of sim­ p/exity and complicity. 356. See chapter 3.3. subsection I I . ::;: ;u "" !" > z CJ ;i; ;u en s: 0 z -<

278 for another, the pedocomparator belongs to "signs." Or rather, it is through the cunning i nvention of this hybrid that the world of >­ z 0 ;::, (/) "' <( [)._ 0 z <( (/) "' things may become a sign [ ... ] . Notice that. a t every stage, each element belongs t o matter by its origin and form by its destination; it is abstracted from a too-concrete domain before it becomes, at the next stage, too concrete again. We never detect the rupture between things "' 0 and signs, and we never face the imposition of arbitrary and f­ UJ z discrete signs on shapeless and continuous matter. We see s z 0 f­ <( z <( only an unbroken series of well nested elements, each of which plays the role of sign for the previous one and of thing for the succeeding one. 357 _J ()._ x Here Latour turns an empirical practice of referential organisa­ tion into an object that is itself to be examined empirically. He thereby aims to understand the practical basis of referential organisation internal to the sciences (e.g . , the counting proce­ dures implicit within the relevant systems of predicates as used by a given discipline) by treating reference as the operation of a sequence of increasingly rarified signs-understood as naturalistically tractable representational vehicles or referents-embedded within our explanatory practices.358 However, by explaining the process through which signs are abstracted from the things they refer to as the production of new concrete things in their own right, he essentially suspends the gesture of abstraction, by refusing to understand these signs qua signs­ as bearers of representational contents or senses. 357. B.' Latour, Pandora's Hope (Cambridge MA: Harvard U niversity Press, 1999) , '17-56. 358. See chapter 3.2, subsection I for a discussion of the distinction between the vehicles and contents of representation. It is also worth noting that this is not en­ tirely dissimilar from Kripke's causal theory of reference (chapter 2.2, subsection Ill).

We are now in a position to see that the concept of translation 279 is essentially a metaphysical generalisation of Latour's concept of circulating reference that makes explicit the epistemological and metaphysical homogeneity hiding within it. This generali­ m x -0 r sation proceeds in two steps: reflexively subsuming itself by � z � _, referentially expanding its anthropological focus from spe­ z cific practices of representation to representation in genera l , before de-anthropocentrising itself b y unilaterally cancelling the difference between its own specifically referential chains and chains of causal interaction in general. This radicalises the initial anthropological bracketing of the difference between epistemic practices into an anthropomorphic reduction of the difference between explanatory connections and causal con­ nections, homogenising its own activity of explanation with what it aims to explain. It is harder to find a methodology more diametrically opposed to Husserl 's phenomenological reduc­ tion, not just because Latour refuses to bracket the existence of things, but because he actively projects his understanding of h i mself onto their existence. This flight from anthropo­ centrism into anthropomorphism is the essence of Latour's amodernism. or his elision of the divide between culture and nature (or norms and causes) .359 However, in collapsing this divide. he has equally collapsed the distinction between sense and reference. This is no longer the local collapse with which we began , in which he permits himself to incorporate scientists' means of reference alongside their referents within his models of scientific practice, but a global collapse, which makes concepts i nterchangeable with their objects - making them nodes in representational 359. Cf. B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U niversity Press, 1993). 0 z m _, ::;;: 0 :u "' (/) � z 0 :;; :u (/) ;:: 0 z -<

2so networks of explanatory connections that are indiscernible from the real networks of causal i nteractions they supposedly >­ z 0 ::2: rJJ 0:: « o._ 0 z « rJJ "' 0:: 0 :s: >­ w z z 0 >­ « z « -' o._ x w represent. Latour essentially inverts the relationship between explanation and representation ( putting the epistemological cart before the metaphysical horse) : he solves the problem of transversality not by providing an alternative ontological schema for organising representation of causal i nteractions between disparate domains, but by ensuring us that they can interact because we can refer to them. Ray Brassier describes the metaphorical u nderpin n i ngs of this move in the most eloquent terms: In dismissing the epistemological obligation to explain what meaning is and how it relates to things that are not mean­ ings, Latour, like all postmodernists-his own protestations to the contrary notwithstanding-reduces everything to mean­ ing, since the difference between ' words' and 'things' turns out to be no more than a functional difference subsumed by the concept of 'actant'-that is to say, it is a merely nominal difference encompassed by the metaphysical function now ascribed to the metaphor 'actant'. Since for Latour the latter encompasses everything from hydroelectric powerplants to toothfairies, it follows that every possible difference between powerplants and fairies-i .e. differences in the mechanisms through which they affect and are affected by other entities, whether those mechanisms are currently conceivable or not-is supposed to be unproblematically accounted for by this single conceptual metaphor. 360 360. Brassier, 'Concepts and Objects', 52.

The metaphysical homogeneity of networks is deeper than 2s1 we previously realised . Not only does the concept of 'actant' elide the ontological difference between individuals and m general kinds (e.g .. between Joliot and neutrons) . but it does r so by eliding the difference between general kinds and the concepts that refer to them (e.g .. between neutrons and the concept <neutron > ) . However, although Harman effectively exploits Latour's conflation of individuality and generality, and otherwise praises his willingness to incorporate fictions. phan­ tasms. and other senses in his explanatory networks, he does not follow Latourian anti-reductionism in conflating sense and reference-his corresponding metaphysical distinction between sensual and real curtails his ontological egalitarianism from the explanatory direction.361 What alternative does metaphysical emergentism provide to this referential catastrophe? It can obviously account for hierarchical explanation insofar as it provides a complementary ontological schema for reduction between domains. but how does it account for the transversal explanations that motivate Latour's anti -reductionism? There is no single answer to this question, but Deleuze and Delanda's metaphysics provide an illustrative example. As we noted in the last chapter: ' it is no easy matter to outline how every variable characteristic of every physical system in the universe could in principle be incorporated as dimensions of a single continuum which would thereby informationally encode the complete actual state of those systems along with their virtual tendencies, let alone how this continuum can still be divided into discrete chunks corre­ sponding to individual systems and their specific tendencies.'362 361. See chapter 3.1. 362. p. 179. x -u )> z )> _, 6 z z m _, � 0 ::0 ;>< "' )> z 0 -u )> ::0 en ;;:: 0 z -<

2s2 However, this is precisely what Deleuze and Delanda aim to do: to articulate a global representational parad igm capable of >­ z 0 ::;; rn "' <( n.. 0 z <( iii "' "' 0 :;:: f­ w z z 0 � z <( _J n.. x w situating every entity within this continuum (as individualising loci of pre-individual variables) , and to thereby enable the explanation of every causal interaction between those enti­ ties (as actual trajectories across virtual surfaces) , including transversal i nteractions between those traditionally confined within the quantificational domains of disparate disciplines.363 Deleuze's account of the plane of immanence is an exqui­ site form ulation of the de-absolutisation objection to the Whole-an attempt to reimagine Spinoza's Substance through the lens of the ontological difference-aiming to re-articulate universals as dimensions of qualitative and quantitative vari­ ation within a dynamically unfolding i nformational surface.364 Delanda's notion of flat ontology is a radical experiment in ontological u nivocity-an attempt to u niversalise dynamic systems theory through population theory-aiming to recon­ ceive individuals as intensive indices within a unitary causal­ mereological nexus of reciprocally constraining processes, in which populations of populations evolve and effervesce out of one another and their i nterwoven environments across a manifold of spatio-temporal scales.365 I n essence, although 363. The classic statement of this transversality is contained in Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (chapter 3). 364 . Cf. Deleuze a nd Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, chapters 3 and 10; What is Philosophy, tr. G. Burchell and H. Tomlinson ( London: Verso, 1994 ) , chapter 2. See my 'Ariadne's Thread: Temporality, Modality and Individuation in Deleuze's Metaphysics' for a detailed discussion of this point. It is also worth pointing out that Deleuze's emergentism is often misinterpreted along the lines of Latour's catastropic anti-reductionism by means of a failure to distinguish between 'the' plane of immanence and 'a' plane of immanence, and the ' Ideas' composing the former from the 'concepts' composing the latter. 365. Cf. Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, chapter 4: A New

they work in opposing directions (universal � individual and 2s3 individual � universa l ) , they both aim to understand beings as such (the univocity of Being)366 through beings as a whole (the plane of immanence) in the same manner as Quine. Nevertheless, they diverge from Quine in refusing his sub­ tractive suturing of the Whole to the referential systems i mplicit in the supposedly u nified enterprise of natural science, but aim to intervene in this enterprise by explicating and revising these referential systems. It is for this reason that their anti­ reductionism is properly metaphysical: it adopts an active role in the global organisation of scientific representation .367 Yet this is the same reason that their anti-reductionism should not be opposed to ontological conservatism: in adopting this role it reaffirms the explanatory value of parsimony, rejecting only the twisted form of parsimony popularised by the propagandists of metaphysical reductionism. It is clear that everything has a place within Deleuze and Delanda's worlds except those things that don 't ('everything exists' is trivial), and that these placeless things are placeless not because they are strictly unthinkable, but because they are explanatorily irrelevant (precisely, 'some things don't exist insofar as they give us no reason to suppose they do' ) . Although ontological liberalism might appear to be an Philosophy of Society ( London and N ew York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006). This term has unfortunately become somewhat of an etymological car crash after its appropriation by 000. As Harman himself points out ( Towards Specu­ lative Realism, 180) it was initially used by Roy Bhaskar but with an opposing sense to Delanda's usage. However, whereas Delanda quite explicitly uses it to withhold existence from certain entities (i.e .. universals such as ' Lionhood ' ) , t h e proponents o f 0 0 0 u s e it t o mean t h e rejection o f all such gestures (cf. Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, 11-19). 366. Cf. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 377-378. 367. Cf. Deleuze, 'I Feel I am a Pure M etaphysician' in Collapse vol . 3. m x 'U r )> z )> _, 0 z z m _, :;;: 0 ;u ;>;; CJ) )> z 0 'U )> ;u CJ) ;;:: 0 z -<

2s� alliance between the noetic and anti-reductionist challenges to ontological conservatism , this alliance is more fragile than it >­ f-­ :::; <t w a:: 0 z <t rn w CL >­ f-rn f-­ (.) w CL rn <t seems. Metaphysical anti-reductionism is less an attack upon ontological conservatism in general than upon the specific form allied to metaphysical reductionism in the twentieth century. Once ontological conservatism abandons reductionism, it can make its peace with emergentism. V. A S PECTS, TYPES, AND REAL ITY It is now time to consolidate our understanding of Harman's OOP and attempt a serious answer to the question with which this chapter (and perhaps this whole book) is concerned : What are objects? However, our dissection of ontological liberalism has revealed that answering this question is far from simple, principally because it must be prefaced by a more subtle question: What does 'object ' mean? The popularisation of this term, as a ( pseudo-sortal ) alternative to 'thing' (Ding, res, entity, being , etc . ) emerged directly from Kant's development of the Cartesian opposition between the 'subject' and 'object' poles of the noetic relation. This noetic connotation of the term was retained in its appropriation by the Austrian school and the H usserlian phenomenology that developed out of it-both of which aimed first and foremost to circumscribe all possible noetic foci ( i ntentional o bjects) . I t was later openly resisted by the numerous critiques of the subject­ object relation that emerged from Heidegger's critique of this Cartesian tradition-all of which i nvariably seek to free 'things' from the theoretical/practical constraints i mposed upon them by the thinking/acting subject .368 That Harman's demand to return to the objects themselves positions itself 368. Not to mention the parallel critiques of the 'objectification' of subjects.

to inherit both of these traditions is thus somewhat peculiar, 2s5 but it is clear that his distinction between sensual and real is supposed to bind these seemingly conflicting enterprises together, by granting each their own half of the concept <object> . However, this feeds back into our initial question. as it is unclear whether this binding is a mere terminological trick, or a genuine conceptual synthesis. Harman's divergences from the noetic and anti-reduc­ tionist challenges to ontological conservatism frame this issue on either side: he curtails the representational dimension of ontological liberalism by refusing to extend the term 'object' to absolutely everything we can think about (i.e .. not all noetic foci are sensual objects) ; and he curtails the explanatory dimension of ontological liberalism by refusing to treat every 'object' as a legitimate exp/anons (i.e .. some sensual objects don't have corresponding real objects) . This means that the term 'object' has a positive content that excludes some things we can think about (e.g .. non-enduring time-slices of objects) . although it isn't clear how this positive content is shared by both real and sensual objects (e.g . . whether sensual objects and real objects endure in the same sense) . It is thus absolutely crucial to make explicit what is common to both types of 'objects', because it is this generic notion of 'object' that Harman appeals to in differentiating himself from his opponents: Some of these objects are physical . others not; some are real, others not real i n the least. But all are unified objects, even if confined to that portion of the world called the mind. Objects are units that both display and conceal a multitude of traits. But whereas the naive standpoint of this book makes no initial claim as to which of these objects is real or unreal, the labor of the intellect is usually taken to be critical rather than naive. )> [/) " m 0 _, "' _, -< " m [/) )> z 0 ;o m )> c _, -<

286 I nstead of accepting this inflated menagerie of entities, critical thinking debunks objects and denies their autonomy. They are >­ f­ _J <{ LI.J 0: 0 z <{ (/) LI.J Q_ >­ f(/) f­ u dismissed as figments of the mind, or as mere aggregates built of smaller physical pieces. Yet the stance of this book is not critical, but sincere. I will not reduce some object to the greater glory of others, but will describe instead how objects relate to their own visible and invisible qualities, to each other, and to our own minds-all in a single metaphysics. 369 LI.J Q_ (/) <{ Whether they a re underminers who downwardly reduce o bjects to somet h i n g more funda mental (e . g . , physical systems, atoms and void, or formless Apeiron) . overminers who upwardly reduce objects to something less tangible (e.g .. sensations. textual effects. or bundles of qualities ) . or both simultaneously (e. g . , by means of an epistemologically Janus-faced ' materia lism ' ) , Harman t h i nks p h ilosophers have not been si ncere i n their theoretical dea l i ngs with objects.370 They have overlooked the middle ground (or ' mezzanine level') of the universe in their rush to theorise their favoured fundament.371 Yet one cannot sincerely demand that they return their attentions to objects without being willing to explain what one means by 'object', and. for all his protestations to the contrary, Harman remains surprisingly elusive on this point. Of course, this elusiveness goes hand-in-hand with his allusiveness. How­ ever, as we have seen. the confluence of metaphysics and metaphorics in allusive ontology is, if anything, a breeding ground for philosophical insincerity. Our aim should thus be 369. The Quadruple Object, 7. 370. Ibid., chapter 1. 371. Cf. 'I am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed'.

to extract as much precision from Harman's allusions as pos­ 287 sible, so as to reconstruct his determinate commitments, or what he sincerely believes. The locus of this precision-the metaphysical innovation hinted at in the above passage-is almost certainly the fourfold schema ; yet it is also in this titular quadruplicity that the elusiveness of the 'object' is most clearly manifest: does the schema confront us with a single genus of objects that are genuinely quadruple (sensual/real and object/ quality) , or two distinct species of objects (sensual/real) that are merely double (object/quality) ? Seemingly subverting its title, The Quadruple Object only ever explicitly describes 'objects' as belonging to mutually exclusive species ( sensual objects or real objects ) ; yet it constantly invokes the allusion embedded therein by implicitly suggesting that 'objects ' somehow unite the two sides: ' I will not reduce some object to the greater glory of others, but will describe i nstead how objects relate to their own visible and i nvisible qualities'372 ( ' o bjects' with both sensual and real qualities ) . The allusion is concentrated in the categorial connections that span the two sides of the schema: the sensual object is in tension with its own real qualities (eidos ) , the real object is in tension with its own sensual qualities (space ) , and sensual qualities radiate from their real counterparts (duplicity) , while the sensual object is encountered by a potentially distinct real object (sincerity ) . In the first three categories ( eidos, space, duplicity) the implicit unity of 'objects' is encoded in the hypostatized referential relation between the sensual object (qua sense) and the real object (qua reference).373 On the one hand , the referential relation between a specific 372. The Quadruple Object. 7 . my emphasis. 373. See chapter 1.2. above. l> (/) "U m () _, Y' _, -< "U m Y' l> z 0 AJ m l> r =< -<

288 sensual object and a specific real object is what enables the counterpart relation between their specific qualities. On the >­ f­ _J <1'. w 0:: 0 z <1'. rJJ w Q_ >­ frJJ f­ u w Q_ rJJ <1'. other hand , this specificity is itself hypostatized in the form of the ' it ' to which both sensual and real qualities can belong . But it is telling that the final category (sincerity) does not address this unity at all, but displaces the concern with the reference relation between sensual object (qua sense) and real object (qua reference) with a diametric concern for the referring relation between sensual object (qua sense) and real object (qua referrer) . This forces the unity to which the fourfold schema alludes to remai n i mplicit, by occupying the only schematic location where it could be made explicit. This leaves us hovering between the species interpretation explicit in the fourfold schema and the genus interpretation implicit in its categorial allusions. Although this tension between i mplicit and explicit is intri­ cately woven into both the form and the content of the fourfold schema in The Quadruple Object, it is already present in an inchoate form in Tool-Being. We can even trace its genesis to a specific passage: To say that every entity is both tool and broken tool is to say that every entity is half physically real and half merely relational. No entity can be assigned unequivocally to one side of the equation or the other. But this i mplies something more than we have seen so far. It is not only the case that every entity has a deeper essence-rather, every essence has a deeper essence as well . This w i l l b e simpler if w e revert t o o u r o w n earlier terminology: not only does an object have tool-being, but this tool-being in turn has its own tool-being [ ... ] The preceding paragraph has a rather strange implication. The initial argument of this book was that Vorhondenheit and

Zuhandenheit are not two distinct classes of entity, but two 289 modes of being that belong to every entity. But we have now pushed Heidegger's insight far enough that the situation has reversed into its opposite. I n a sense. it has now turned out that the hammer in use and the hammer in its tool-being are not simply two sides of the same coin, but two different coins altogether. In a n u nexpected sense, presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand turn out to be two distinct beings. 374 This passage provides us with three insights into the genesis of Harman's system . The fi rst insight is that the 'objects' which unify the two halves of the fourfold are descended from the reading of Heidegger with which his metaphysics beg i n s , which i nsisted upon treating the ready-to-hand (su bstance) and the present -at - h a nd ( relation) as two aspects of the same object, rather than two types of distinct objects. The second insight is that, in clawing its way out of the belly of this reading, his metaphysics transitions from the aspect view to the type view, even if it never entirely cuts the cord between them that its allusions to unity depend upon. The final insight is that the catalyst for this transition is the col lision between his Husserlo- Meinongian account of representation and the reflexivity of sense-the real isation that in referring to the object-for-us and the object-in-itself independently from one another, he has converted them into distinct objects that must themselves be sundered between the for-us and the in-itself ( i .e .. the for-us-in-itself, the for-us­ for-us, the in-itself-in-itself. and the in-itself-for-us) . It is this final insight that concerns us, because this newly discovered reflexivity heralds a runaway recursive doubling of 374 . Tool-Being, 258-9. )> (/) -u m 0 _, ."' _, -< -u m ."' )> z 0 ;o m )> c:: _, -<

290 every 'object' through which even the referents of metaphysi­ cal thought (i.e., sensual objects and real objects) perpetually >­ f­ ::J ., w a:: 0 z ., rJJ w "­ >­ f(J) f0 w "­ (J) ., evade us, escaping across fractal senses (i.e., [sensual [sensual [sensual [ ... ] ] ] ] or [ [ [ [ ... ] for us] for us] for us] ) . It thus seems as if the reflexive transubstantiation of aspects into types should make metaphysical knowledge of these types impossible in the same way that the initial d istinction between aspects made knowledge of 'objects' impossible. This would mean the total and utter collapse of Harman's metaphysical edifice. He briefly addresses this worry in a different section of the previous passage: Will this lead to an "infinite regress" of tool-beings? For now, we can simply call it an "indefinite regress" , and move on to other problems that arise from the emerging concept of substance. 375 It is first worth pointing out that the substitution of 'indefinite' for ' i nfinite' is. at best . a clarification of what makes the regress problematic, and. at worst . a mere terminological sleight of hand designed to d is miss the severity of this problem . It is next worth pointing out that the tacit promise to return to this regress after addressing other problems is never actually fulfilled . Although Guerrilla Metaphysics stumbles through the same conceptual terrai n at various points, it fails to reformulate the problem , let alone solve it.376 The type view is simply restated in The Quadruple Object. as 375. Tool-Being, 259. 376. This stumbling takes two forms: (a) Harman's fleeting dalliance with 'ele­ ments', which does little but blur the lines between qualities and objects. and ( b) his disastrous attempt to defuse the distinction between an object and its essence, which results in a complete collapse of the distinction between objects and their qualities (see chapter 3.2, subsection I I ) .

a seemingly stable axis harbouring no hidden regress. This 291 blocks the recursive doubling of objects into sense/reference branches in a manner parallel to the temporal blockage upon the division of objects into time-slices, but it also erases the genesis of the type view. This erasure is responsible for both its allusiveness- by secu ring its continued indiscernibility from the aspect view-and its elusiveness-by concealing the continued absence of a distinct justification for it. Ultimately, the seemingly diagrammatic precision of the fourfold schema is nothing but an alibi for a more insidious conceptual vagueness.377 Its neat numerological derivation of ontographic categories conceals the intractable obscurity of the elementary metaphysical categories they are founded upon : object, quality, and relation . We have progressively traced the pathologies of Harman's deployment of these categories across the three preceding sections, but having contextualised his concern with 'objects' and shown how this concern is embedded in his mature categorial schema, we are now in a position to i ntegrate those insights i nto a comprehensive epidemiology of obfuscation. Harman can never give the concept <Object > a deter­ minate positive content qua genus to which sensual and real objects belong as species, because our grasp of the latter is still tethered to understanding them as aspects of a unified 'object'. Conversely, he can never g ive the concept a determinate positive content qua universal of which these unified objects are instances, because the allusion to them which the fourfold schema encodes cannot be made explicit without contradict­ ing its axial d ivision of 'objects' i nto mutually exclusive types. This conflict within the concept is the ultimate consequence of 377. See diagram on p. 19, above. )> (/) -iJ m 0 � (/) � -< -iJ m (/) )> z 0 :;o rn )> r � -<

292 the hypostatization of reference explained in chapter 3,1 , 'Sense and Sensuality'. The catastrophic contradictions of Harman's >­ f­ _, <{ w "' D z <{ (/} w (L >­ f- (/} f­ u w (L (/} <{ representationalism are only contained by the representational blockage allusively encoded in the fourfold diagram, which disguises the choice between the de-reification of sense­ refusing the ontological distinction between the object-for-us and the object-in-itself-and its fractal proliferation-allowing the recursive branching of objects- [ . . . ] -for-us that is seem­ ingly indistinguishable from anti-metaphysical correlationism. As ever, only the invocation of allusion as an oblique mode of reference immune to the ontological bifurcation of sense and reference is sufficient to cut the gordian knot this choice presents us with: we avoid contradiction by thinking in a manner that is supposedly beyond such logical niceties. The resultant vacuousness of the concept <object > is positively virulent. infecting and evacuating the concept <qual­ ity> of its determinate content by means of their opposition within the second axis of the fourfold schema. The orthogonal opposition between real and sensual precludes understanding <quality> as a genus to which both sensual and real qualities belong i n much the same way it precludes understanding <object> as a genus. However, i n this case it is a consequence of the hypostatization of predication (as explained in chapter 3 . 2, 'Qualities and Qualia', above) . Harman severs the repre­ sentational connection between reference and predication and thereby establishes the duplicitous relationship between the qualities of the object-for-us and the object-in- itself that absolutely segregates them. This segregation prevents us from abstracting anything common to them that is not already sup­ plied by Harman's implicit account of the predicative dimension of representation. Harman's qualitative haecceitism is less an attempt to fill this conceptual void than its recognition

qua void: the 'vacuous actuality' of real qualities is simply the 293 projection of the sheer thisness of sensory qualities onto their representational counterparts, constrained by a duplicitous filter that permits no commonality beyond mere thisness. It is thus hardly surprising that Harman complements this explicit recognition of vacuousness with an implicit allusion to mereol­ ogy, because he has nothing else with which to shore up the axial distinction between the referential thisness of objects and the predicative thisness of qualities. Nevertheless, it is the concept <relation> that incorporates the most fascinating paradox . As explained above (chapter 3 . 3 , 'What are Relations Anyway ? ' ) , the very possibility of categorially circumscribing the various possible ' relations' that can obtain within Harman's world (confrontation. theory, allure, and causation ) - by means of the 'tensions' between the four poles of the schema (time, eidos, space, and essence) as their ' fission' (confrontation-time and theory-eidos) and 'fusion ' (allure-space and causation-essence )-is dependent upon not counting these tensions ( nor the junctions and radiations) as the relations between poles that they so obviously are (SO­ SQ, SO-RQ, RO-SQ, and RO-RQ ) . Distilling the paradox: the concept <relation> is used to restrict itself in a way that would preclude this very use. Once more, Harman's only way to navigate paradox is by harnessing the power of metaphor to evade inconvenient reflexivity: the sense in which tensions are relations must be a metaphorical appropriation of the sense in which their fusions and fissions are relations. This evasion turns in a metaphorical circle that is not so much vicious as it is absurd : a metaphor that is parasitic upon the very concept it is constructed to define. Nevertheless, as absurd as this is, it is not the most egregious obfuscation diagrammatically embedded in the fourfold, an honour which belongs to the )> (f) "U m 0 _, Y' _, -< "U m (f) )> z 0 :u m )> r::: _, -<

294 category of sincerity.378 Not only does sincerity occupy the only place in the schema in which its underlying unity could >­ f­ _J <( UJ a:: 0 z <( [/) UJ 11_ >­ f- [/) f­ u UJ 11_ [/) <( be articulated (SO-RO ) , but in doing so it equally suppresses the crucial factor that distinguishes the 'surface relations' of confrontation and theory from the 'deep relations' of allure and causation-namely, the referential connection between the sensual object and real object that enables us to vicariously encounter the latter through the former. All of these considerations bring us back to the Husserlo­ Meingonian account of representation from which Harman's metaphysics unfurls, and the primitive relation between the object-for-us and the object-in-itself that defines it. We have already said much about this account. both in trying to wrest it from its lair, hidden deep between the lines of Harman's texts, and in trying to dissect it. unveiling its limited explanatory skeleton; we have even situated it within a broader lineage of noetic challenges to ontological conservatism; but we have yet to really consider what motivates these challengers to ground representation in metaphysics. The best way of bringing out this motivation is to consider the case of fictional objects, such as Eldorado. Popeye, or the three little pigs. It is even better to return to the sort of claims about fictional objects that proved problematic for Quine (e.g . , ' Eldorado has a golden king', ' Popeye has a girlfriend ', and 'two out of three little pigs lost their houses to the big bad wolf ' ) . I ntuitively, these claims seem to be true, but they cannot be interpreted as true unless we take them to quantify over fictional objects, and this seems to suggest that these fictional objects exist. However, and just as intuitively, these fictional objects don't seem to exist in 378. That the most obfuscatory category within Harman's schema is called 'sincerity" is an irony that is not lost on me. I will have more to say about Har­ man"s invocation of the virtue of sincerity in chapter 3.6.

the same way as non-fictional objects such as London, Boris 295 Johnson, or the 650 elected members of the House of Commons. Of course, just as there are ontological conservatives who deny the former i ntuition (e. g . , Quine) , there are ontologi­ cal liberals who deny the latter (e.g . , Gabriel ) , but there are others who try to affirm them both (e. g . , Meinong ) . Meinong aims to synthesise them by means of a d istinction between ]> (/) " m 0 4 (/) 4 -< " m (/) sist-whereas Harman holds that everything exists, but that ]> z 0 ;1J m ]> everything is not therefore real. For Harman, the d ifference 4 -< modes of Being-some things do not exist but merely sub­ between Popeye and Boris Johnson is not that, as generic 'objects', they have different modes of Being, but rather that, as encountered sensual objects, only one of them conceals a corresponding real object . It is a useful exercise to consider whether there is another way to synthesise these intuitions, or an alternative to both Meinong and Harman's Husserlo-Meinongian hybrid. Consider the following suggestion: what if we agree that it is true that ' Popeye has a girlfriend ' and thus that there is some sense of 'existence' in which it is true that 'Olive Oyl exists' , but that nevertheless there is a univocal sense in which ' Olive Oyl doesn't really exist ' . This is precisely the sort of talk that free logic formalises, by enabling us to i ntroduce non-referring terms that we can nevertheless use i n quantification.379 On this view, what ' really exists' is what lies within the inner quantificational domain (the Whole)-the content ( beings) corresponding to its structure ( Being/Noth i ng ) . But how does this differ from Harman's view? Surely, they both agree that ' Popeye has a girlfriend' and that 'Olive Oyl isn't rea l ' ? T h e crucial difference is that t h i s view-my view-denies 379. See chapter 3.4 . subsection I I . r

296 the need to provide a metaphysical explanation for how we can think about Ol ive Oyl even if she isn't rea l . This non- >- � metaphysical approach to fictions is not for that matter anti­ <( w "' 0 z <( metaphysical: it simply maintains that metaphysics begins and _J (/) w [l_ >­ f-(/) f-­ u w [l_ (/) <( ends with reality, and that we can happily think and talk about unreal things that lie entirely beyond its scope. I n endorsing this view I am an unabashed ontological conservative, albeit one who is more drawn to Deleuze's metaphysical emergentism than to Quine's subtractive naturalism. How can we resolve the conflict between my non­ metaphysical approach to fictions and Harma n ' s o bject­ oriented metaphysics? I t h i n k it is worth d rawing some inspiration from Hegel 's account of Sense-Certai nty: ' But language, as we see, is the more truthfu l ; i n it we ourselves directly refute what we mean to say' .380 That is, we should aim to explicitly articulate the motivation for Harman's approach, and see if this very attempt leads to its refutation. This means capturing what it is about the non-metaphysical approach that Harman would find so i nadequate. Harman might insist that 'Olive Oyl exists ! ' , to which I would respond with qualified agreement. He would then try to leverage my qualification into a disagreement, claiming that ' But you don't think she really exists ! ' , to which I would most certainly agree, and add ' But surely, neither do you ? ' At this point, Harman would want to say something like 'I mean that Olive Oyl really exists qua sensual object even if she doesn't really exist qua real object!' This is the point at which language is more truthful-the natural way to counter my ' really' qualification is to posit a different sense of ' really ' , but this sense must split apart 380. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 1977) , §97.

from the sense in which real objects are ' rea l ' , so that we 291 distinguish between ' really unreal' objects and ' really real' ones. However, it is crucial to understand that this bifurcation of ' reality' is nothing but the other fork of the recursive sense/ reference branching engendered by the reflexive application of Harman's account of representation. In the attempt to talk about the object-for-us-in-itself our metaphysical referent . escapes us along the edge of a ramifying pathway: object­ for-us- [ [ [ . . . ] ]-in- itself) in-itself]-in-itself or really- [ really-[ really­ [ . . . ) ) ) -unreal. Harman would no doubt insist that his allusive escapology secures the possibility of metaphysics against the trivial reflexive gymnastics of literal thought, but this can never compensate for the fact that he cannot say what he sincerely believes, even if he can allude to it. What are objects? If you ask Graham Harman, expect a gesture, not an answer. )> (/) -0 m 0 � !" � -< -0 m !" )> z 0 ,, m )> r =i -<

5 . W H AT I S M ETA P H YS I CS A N YWAY? 299 ::;: I I have now thoroughly circumscribed OOP as an exercise in first philosophy-an attempt to provide an ontological and categorial foundation for non-metaphysical explanation-and vindicated my contention that it is both explanatorily impo­ tent-since it ignores explanatory anti-representationalism in favour of brute representational ism-and explanatorily regres­ sive-since it precludes any positive analysis of properties in favour of gastronomic mysticism. Moreover, I have thoroughly articulated the sense in which OOP is methodologically uncriti­ cal in its use of basic metaphysical concepts-quality, relation, and even object itself-and the manner in which this is both engendered and obfuscated by its prioritisation of aesthetics as first philosophy-the mixture of metaphors, diagrams, and rhetoric that allusively position the ontological circumscrip­ tion of thought as its own constitutive exception. However, although I have tentatively outlined the role that ontology has played within the history of metaphysics-as the study of the · types of things which exist (regional/applied ontology) and as the study of what it is for them to exist (fundamental/meta­ ontology)-and tentatively explained how it i ntersects with two distinct forms of metaphysical scepticism- H usserlian phenomenology (and its Heideggerian legacy) and Carnapian semantics (and its Guinean legacy) -1 have yet to say anything about what metaphysics is. if it is not first philosophy. The aim of this section , departing from the profoundly negative path we have walked so far. is to try to articulate some positive insights about what metaphysics is and how we should go about it. In doing so, I do not aim to say anything about what results metaphysics should achieve (what an adequate � (/) ;;:: m :;! -0 I -< � 0 (/) )> z -< ::;: :'( . ..,

300 alternative to OOP would look like) but simply to try to see what Harman's cultivated obliviousness to methodology can <'· >­ <( 5: >­ z <( (/) 0 (/) >­ I Q_ <( f­ w 2 teach us about the process of constructing such an alternative. So, what is metaphysics? As I have already noted , this important question does not get asked often enough, and gets answered even less. We can imagine Socrates prowling through contemporary philosophy departments demanding to know just what it is metaphysicians are up to, only to be confronted with Cl? examples of metaphysical problems (e.g . , personal identity, the 5: definitions.381 This is not a new predicament though . Unlike f­ <( I nature of change, the existence of the Divine, etc.) rather than logic, epistemology, semantics, or even ethics, metaphysics has always been a loosely defined grouping of problems in search of a definition. To repeat the story told earlier, even the term 'metaphysics' is an accident of the way in which Aristotle's works were catalogued . It originally referred to those books which came after the books on physics, and only later came to denote a subject matter loosely understood to transcend the physical. There is of course a more detailed history of this development to be told, but I shall reach a little further back i nto the origi ns of the Western philosophical tradition before I come to it. Wilfrid Sellars famously defined philosophy as that enter­ prise that aims to ' understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.'382 This quote is sometimes reached 381. This is i nvariably the way that metaphysics is taught to undergraduate students. a fact which is attested to by the lack of a solid definition in many basic textbooks on metaphysics. I n its place, we find a loose taxonomy of prob­ lems. arranged by family resemblances. 382. W. Sellars, ' Philosophy and the Scientific I mage of Man', in Science, Per­ ception, and Reality ( Reseda. CA: Ridgeview Humanities Press, 1991) , §1.

for when the question of defining metaphysics is raised , but it 301 is a poor stopgap. This is not to say that it is a bad definition of philosophy, just that we should not be so quick to identify metaphysics with the discipline of philosophy as a whole, which such appeals inevitably do. To do so is to undermine the whole point of defining metaphysics as a specific philosophical disci­ pline. However, the legitimate intuition underlying this move is that there is something eminently general about metaphysics, even in its specificity. The results of metaphysical inquiry are supposed to have an expansive, if not infinite, range of impact across other disciplines ( both philosophical and extra­ philosophical ) . Let us call this issue the question of generality. If we return to the origin of Western philosophy in the presocratics, we see that Sellars's definition describes what they are doing pretty wel l . They are engaged in the first great attempts at synoptic thinking, trying to bring together the various elements of their cultural understanding by means of unitary principles: water, air, fire, etc. However, their thinking is not yet systematic, insofar as they have yet to differentiate the numerous theoretical tasks i nto which phi losophy will eventually divide itself (e.g . . logic. ethics, aesthetics, etc . ) , let alone articulate the various relations between these tasks. The presocratic who deserves special mention is Parmenides, who i naugurates the first and foremost foundational philosophical distinction: that between thought-which includes what we are doing in philosophising-and Being-which names the bare unity of whatever it is that his compatriots were trying to identify with their respective primal elements. This is the conception of metaphysics, if not yet its birth, insofar as its core subject matter ( Being) is separated off from the study of the means through which it is to be grasped (thought). It is thus :;;: I � (/J ;:: m );! 'U I -< '!? 0 (/J )> z -< :;;: )> -< ..,,

302 "" ><( ;;;: >­ z <( rn u rn >­ I 0.. ;"". LJ.J ::; � f­ <( I ;;;: equally the conception of logic, in its most general sense.383 This distinction inaugurates the questions regarding the methodologica/ relation between logic and metaphysics ( itself a logical matter, broadly construed ) and the substantive relation between thought and Being ( itself a metaphysical matter, broadly construed ) . These questions haunt the h istory of metaphysics, most clearly in the never-ending and progres­ sively more complicated debates regarding realism and ideal­ ism (along with anti-realism. correlationism, and the other positions spawned by this debate) .384 We will lump all these issues together under the heading of the question of thought. Given the conception of metaphysics in Parmenides. we might say that Plato's work is where it gestates. Moreover, if Socrates was the first thinker within the tradition to begin the task of thinking about the structure of thought (with his pragmatic, dialectical approach to logic) . then Plato is the first to begin real systematic thinking about both the structure of thought and the structure of Being, and their relation to one another. This does not yet amount to an explicit differentiation of the systematic task of metaphysics, which is only truly born in the work of Aristotle. However, as we have already noted , the term ' metaphysics' appears nowhere within Aristotle's work. 383. It is this broad sense of ' logic' that Hegel is referring to in the title of his Science of Logic. It should not be confused with formal or mathematical logic, which is an important part of the broader study of thought. I shall have more to say about the latter in chapters 3.6 and 4 .1. 384 . The framing of these issues in terms of the debate between real­ ism and anti-realism ( principally in logical terms) obviously emerges out of Dummett's work (cf. The Logical Bosis of Metaphysics [Cambridge. MA: Harvard U niversity Press. 1991]) , whereas the framing of these issues in terms of the debate between correlationism , realism and idealism (princi­ pally in metaphysical terms) . emerges out of Quentin Meillassoux's work (cf. After Finitude).

I nstead, Aristotle talks of first philosophy (prate philosophia) , which is what ultimately becomes the template for metaphysics as it is practised by subsequ e nt philosophers. As such , we can legitimately claim that Aristotle presents the first definition of metaphysics, insofar as he does go to some lengths to define its scope and subject matter. We have already explained this definition (the study of beings as such and as a whole) and its subsequent development (scholasticism and onto-theology) ,385 but it is useful to point out a further issue that Aristotle's defini­ tion of first philosophy raises, and which I shall call the question of priority. We have already indicated that the tradition is concerned with the question of how metaphysics is related to other disciplines i n terms of its generality, and how it is related to the discipline of logic more specifically, but what we have in our sights here is the issue of priority i nvolved in all such relations. Are the results of metaphysics to be foundational for all other forms of inquiry, for some such forms, or for none at all? Those who aim to inherit the title of first philosophy lay claim to some variant of Aristotle's answer to this question: metaphysics is the fou ndation of everything else. I . THE D I A LECT I C OF D E MA RCAT I ON If we take only one insight about the metaphysical tradition from Heidegger, it is that there is something important about its own lack of self-consciousness regarding its defining ques­ tion (the question of Being) and that this ' forgetfulness' structures the way metaphysics develops throughout its his­ tory. I n particular, this forgetting of Being has a complicated relationship to the more or less implicit answers to the ques­ tions of generality, thought and priority that the tradition 385. Chapter 3.4 , subsection I. 303 _, I m 0 :;;: r m () _, 0 0 'Tl 0 m ;;:: )> ;;o () )> _, 0 z

304 provides for itself as it develops. It is this that we must bear z 0 physics after Aristotle's inaugural definition . in mind as we return to examining the development of meta­ !;;: (.) "' <( :::> w 0 u.. 0 S! 1- (.) w _J <( 0 w I I- It is perhaps rather hasty to treat scholasticism as a unitary body of doctrine emerging out of the Christian appropriation of Aristotle's work, but this is precisely what I intend to do. During the scholastic period there is obviously a massive amount of work done i n fleshing out Aristotle's metaphysics. p roducing numerou s variants and several d isti nct alterna­ tives.386 M ore i mportantly, a vast collection of specifically metaphysical problems emerge, creating and tying together the various debates that both constitute the scholastic tradi­ tion and provide the backdrop against which the rationalist and empiricist programmes that kick off the modern philo­ sophical era are formulated . Many of these problems emerge out of the specifically theological character of the scholastic appropriation of Aristotle (e.g .. the problem of evi l ) . and they are carried forth into the rationalist metaphysics of Descartes. Spinoza . and Leibniz even as they kick away the Aristotelian methodological scaffolding within which they were initially constructed . Here then is the question : which of these pur­ portedly metaphysical problems are genuine problems, and which are pseudo-problems? Once there is a loosely defined metaphysical tradition, whose problems are related by various h istorically configured relationships of family resemblance. any really novel metaphysical inquiry is faced with a demarcation problem. It must once more undertake to define metaphysics. so as to choose which of the 'metaphysical ' problems it inherits from its forebears can be retai ned. and which can be regarded as mere historical artefacts. 386. N eoplatonism and nominalism deserve special mention here.

However, as we see in the case of the rationalists, as brilliant 305 as these thinkers are (e.g .. Spinoza and Leibniz still set the terms of today's metaphysical debates regarding the nature of modality) , it is entirely possible for them to simply ignore the d emarcation problem, at least in the form of the demand for a principle of demarcation. They just choose the problems they find most compelling and run with them. This strategy is the essence of what Heidegger calls the forgetting of Being . We will call it the mainstream strategy, because it is most -< I m 0 � r m 0 -< 0 0 'TI 0 m :;;: )> ;a 0 certainly the dominant approach, even in the present day. :.>; However, there are two other strategies that also emerge at z this point . and which are importantly i nterlinked : the scepti­ cal strategy and the revisionary strategy. We will i ntroduce these by continuing our dramatisation of the history of metac physics, beginning with the first (or at least most pronounced ) proponent of metaphysical scepticism: David Hume. Hume is the first philosopher to define metaphysics sim­ ply in order to demonstrate its impossibility.387 His principled answer to the demarcation problem is that there are no genu­ ine metaphysical problems. It is i nteresting to consider this response i n terms of the questions of thought and priority we discussed above. Firstly, Hume uses resources from his account of thought to provide an epistemological defi nition of metaphysical inquiry as that which transcends scientific inquiry grounded in experience. This picks up on the scholastic rei nterpretation of metaphysics as that which is concerned with what transcends the physical. He then aims to show that metaphysical questions so understood ( most famously those 387. Cf. David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. i n Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals (Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press. 1975). §1. 0

306 concerning the nature of causality and normativity, or a/ethic z 0 of the framework of empirical inquiry, and thus should be aban­ and deontic modality) are strictly impossible to answer outside �u a:: ..: :::; UJ 0 LL 0 ':! f­ u w _J ..: Ci w I f- doned as false problems.388 Secondly, Hume gives the first (or most prominent) instance of a particular answer to the question of priority, which comes to define the subsequent tradition of empiricism and its naturalist offshoots: the idea that the results of metaphysics, whatever it is, must be subordinated to those of empirical (or natural) science.389 This position is one that will be articulated in more or less consistent ways fol lowing H ume, but it is no exaggeration to say that it has come to dominate the philosophical field, at least in the analytic tradition.390 If Hume is the paradigmatic example of a metaphysical sceptic, then Kant is his metaphysical revisionist counterpart. Kant takes Hume's various epistemological challenges seriously, and he recog nises that, agai nst mainstream metaphysics. the only way to preserve the legitimate parts of traditional metaphysical inquiry that Hume overzealously amputates is to confront the problem of demarcation head on. This is the goal of his project in the Critique of Pure Reason: to carry out a critical delimitation of the problems of metaphysics which thereby articulates the constraints under which any future metaphysical inquiry should be carried out.391 Moreover, not 388. See chapter 3.2, subsection I l l . 389. Precisely how o n e defines philosophical naturalism i s a difficult question. However, at minimum, I would suggest that it is precisely the disentangling of this response to the question of priority from the particular epistemological prejudices of empiricism. 390. Cf. Brandom, Between Saying and Doing, chapter 1. 391. Sadly, few people read Kant's Metaphysical Foundations af Natural Sci­ ence, which is meant to be his positive contribution to metaphysics (along with the Opus Posthumum) , rather than his negative delimitation of which positions are impermissible.

only does Kant attempt to respond to the specific problems 307 Hume raises for metaphysical inquiry ( most famously defending the legitimacy of causal and normative theorising) ;392 he adopts the choices that frame Hume's own attempt to define --< I m 0 :;:; metaphysics: he provides a n epistemological definition of r m metaphysics that gives priority to the natural sciences.393 ::! What is fascinating here is the historical interplay between the three strateg ies. H u me's epistemological challenge to mainstream metaphysics leads to a revisionary epistemological response from Kant. This then leads to a gradual mainstreaming of Kant's approach, i n which problems from the tradition prior to H ume/Kant are slowly rei ntegrated i nto his framework (e. g . , Schelling's metaphysics o f Freedom a n d Hegel 's theology of Absolute Spirit) , ultimately resulting in the excesses of German Idealism against which the next round of metaphysical sceptics will react . What is also interesting is that these excesses are largely caused by a sh ift in focus from the methodolog i ­ cal t o t h e substantive form o f t h e question o f thought: the relationshi p between thought and Being ceases to be episte­ mologically prescribed ( transcendental idealism) and instead becomes metaphysically prescribed (absolute idealism) . The real value of looking at the history of metaphysics in this way extends beyond giving us a clearer insight into the specific metaphysical (or anti-metaphysical) positions involved in this period : it gives us a loose dialectical schema in terms of which to understand the developments in the twentieth century that are the main topic of the present section. 392. Again, see chapter 3.2, subsection I l l . 393. It i s because o f this that eminent Kantians such a s Sellars can legiti­ mately claim a prominent naturalist pedigree. 0 0 0 ,, 0 m ;;: )> ;o 0 )> --< 0 z

3oa II. DEFL ATIONA RY REAL IS M ::; that the anti-metaphysical correlationism of Wittgenstein and Returning to the analytic tradition first. it is important to see (/) :::i <( w 0:: >0:: <( z 0 I­ <( _J LL w 0 Carnap that we discussed earlier is a sceptical response to both the excesses of German idealism and the metaphysical rejoinders of British realism (e.g .. Russell and Moore).394 Given our dialectical schema, we can now see that the relationship between Carnap and Quine is analogous to the debate between Hume and Kant. even though it is specifically concerned with existence rather than modality. The real difference between the two debates is that Carnap mounts a semantic challenge to the possibility of metaphysics, rather than an epistemological one. This is to say that not only does he think it impossible to determine the truth of metaphysical claims (as Hume does) , but a fortiori that they make no sense whatsoever. We have already explained that Quine concurs with the greater part of Carnap's critique of metaphysics: he agrees that metaphysics must be semantically delimited, he agrees that doing so renders most of traditional metaphysics meaningless, and he shares Carnap's commitment to the priority of science over metaphysics; he demurs merely i n providing a revisionary semantic definition of ontology that secures a tiny sliver of traditional metaphys­ ics against Carnap's sceptical assault. H owever. it is worth explaining the alternative to anti-metaphysical correlationism inaugurated by this slight divergence-what I call deflationary realism-insofar as it is this Guinean innovation that heralds the return of metaphysics within the analytic tradition.395 394 . This relationship to German idealism is mediated by British idealism. to which Russell and Moore were responding. and German neo-Kantianism. which was the principle reference point for the Vienna Circle i n conceiving their break with the tradition. 395. For an extended discussion. see my ' Essay on Transcendental Realism'.

Deflationary realism is defined by a certain dialectical strategy 309 for intervening in metaphysical debates between realists and anti-realists. Quine implements this strategy in relation to the traditional debate between platonism ( realism) and nominalism (anti-realism) over the existence of numbers and other math­ ematical objects. Whereas the platonist holds that numbers ' really' exist in the same sense as the familiar middle-sized physical objects littering the everyday world, the nominalist denies this, holding that only the latter ' really' exist. Quine's intervention is to claim that neither side knows what it means by 'really', and a fortiori that this meaning cannot be extracted from the confused i ntuitions that drive metaphysical specula­ tion. This is the dialectical significance of Quine's subtractive suturing of existence to the syntactic regimentation of quan­ tificational variables deployed in natural-scientific theorising . A similar move is made by McDowell in relation to the debate between realism (e. g . , Mackie) and expressivism (e.g . , Black­ burn) over the reality of value properties.396 Whereas the realist holds that the sunset ' really' is beautiful i n the same sense that it is caused by the diffraction of light through the atmosphere, the expressivist denies this, holding that only the latter is a 'real' property. McDowell's intervention is to claim that there is no way of distinguishing between the truth-apt­ ness of the claims 'the sunset is beautiful ' and 'the sunset is caused by the diffraction of light through the atmosphere' that would not beg the metaphysical question, and thus that their truth or falsity can't be used to distinguish ' real' properties 396. Cf. J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrang ( London: Penguin, 1990): S. Blackburn. Spreading the Ward (Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 1984 ) : and J. McDowell, 'Values and Secondary Qualities' and ' Projection and Truth in Ethics', in Mind. Value, and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer­ sity Press, 1998) , 131-50 and 151-66. 0 m .., r � 0 z )> ;a -< ;a m )> r iii ;::

310 from 'unreal ' ones. What unites these deflationary moves is ::;; (fJ _J <( w a:: >­ a:: <( z 0 things in themselves without appealing to a substantive 'real­ the attempt to articulate a realism (or anti-anti-realism) about i= <( _J u.. w 0 ity' that must be secured by means of a special supplement (meta-physics) to our ordinary description of them (physics) . Deflationary realism thereby abandons the radical scepticism of anti-metaphysical correlationism for a more circumspect suspicion of metaphysics as a positive project. Given this lingering suspicion, why does the lush garden of analytic metaphysics blossom in the methodological desert of Quinean ontology? This unanticipated reinflation of meta­ physical debate is the dialectical parallel of the resurgence of speculative idealism in the wake of Kant's critical idealism­ the mainstreaming of the revisionary moment, i n which its methodological purpose is gradually forgotten and traditional problems are slowly reimported into the new framework. To understand why this happens, it is necessary to draw out the answer to the question of thought implicit within deflationary realism, and to see how this slides from a methodological to a substantive co n ception of the relation between Being and thought, much as transcendental idealism slides into absolute idealism. We must first explain how deflationary realism col­ lapses metaphysics into semantics: its answer to the question of thought is that there is no more to metaphysics-the study of the structure of Being-than semantics-the study of the structure of thought .397 This is made explicit to some extent in Davidson's account of the relationshi p between metaphys­ ics and semantics: he moves us from the mundane Quinean 397. This position is actually best articulated by Brandom as what he calls objective idealism (' Holism and Idealism in Hegel's Phenomenology". in Tales of the Mighty Dead. 178-209).

ontology of the entities implied by natural science to a relatively 311 innocuous categorial ontology derived from assumptions about u niversal g rammatical categories beyond simple quantifier phrases.398 This is the basis of his deflationary metaphysics of events.399 Quine disagrees with this,400 but he does not fi nd it as horrific as the metaphysical menagerie that Lewis unleashes in the second half of the twentieth century. What happens in the latter is that Quine's commitment to the priority of the natural sciences is loosened (despite the ubiquity of ' natural­ ism') to allow for greater semantic speculation - admitting naturalistically intractable entities so long as they can be used to make sense of the meaning of the claims made by the natural sciences themselves .401 In essence, once Quine allows us to deploy indispensability arguments derived from the claims of the natural sciences, he opens up the possibility of deploying indispensability arguments derived from the analyses of these claims provided by philosophical and formal semantics. H owever. the reason why the real horrors of modern analytic metaphysics emerge with Lewis rather than Davidson is that Lewis's semantic methodology abandons the residual 398. Cf. D. Davidson, 'The Method of Truth i n Metaphysics', Midwest Stud­ ies in Philosophy 2:1 (1977). 244-54: and 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Asso­ ciation, Vol. 47 (1973-74 ) , 5-20. 399. D. Davidson. 'The I ndividuation of Events', in N. Rescher (ed . ) , Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel (Dordrecht: Reidel . 1969 ) , reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001 ) . 400. Cf. W . V . 0 . Quine, ' O n t h e Very Idea o f a Third Dogma', in Theories and Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991 ) . 4 0 1 . This is enabled b y t h e paradigm o f model-theoretic semantics that grew out of Tarski's work, whose applicability to natural language semantics was initially championed by Davidson but taken in very different directions by Kripke, Lewis, and Montague, amongst others. 0 m "Tl r )> --< 0 z )> ;u -< ;u m )> r (ii :;::

312 pragmatism Davidson inherits from Quine and the constraints upon permissible assumptions this supplies. Quine and David- ::;; (/) __J <! (LJ 0:: >0:: <! z 0 f­ <! __J LL (LJ 0 son not only espouse the priority of natural science over metaphysics, but also the priority of natural science over semantics. They are very scrupulous about the entities they allow explanatory roles within their (consequently very austere) semantic frameworks. The abandonment of these scruples i n the transition t o Lewis's possible world semantics i s t h e catalyst for the metaphysical explosion that fol lows. On the one hand, Lewis is ontologically committed to a plurality of possible worlds containing a menagerie of possible objects existing alongside the actual world and its actual objects. On the other, he is categorially committed to understanding the actuality of the actual world i n indexica/ terms (i.e., 'actually.. .' is equivalent to 'here in this world .. .' ) , and the trans-world identity of i ndividu­ als i n terms of counterpart relations between individuals in different worlds (e.g . , ' I could have been a boxer' is equivalent to 'I have counterparts that are boxers ' ) . He justifies these commitments on the basis that they enable him to interpret the semantics of the modal language deployed by natural science in terms of implicit quantifiers over worlds and objects (e. g . , '1N o f force will always accelerate 1kg o f mass a t a rate o f 1 m / s 2 ' c a n b e parsed as 'there is no 1kg mass i n a n y possible world accessible from our own that when subjected to a force of 1N did not accelerate at a rate of 1m/s2') .402 This subtly i nverts "102. This example is obviously an oversimplification of both the relevant physical law (it takes an instance of the law [1 = 111 ] , rather than the law itself [F= ma] ) and Lewis's semantics (it ignores both the issue of tense and tem­ porality, and the issue of potential defeasors). However, it gives a rough idea of how the quantificational machinery underlying Lewis's modal semantics works, and importantly, just what work is done by the accessibility relations that restrict these quantifiers. For more details, see On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) and Counterfactuals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).

the deflationary collapse of metaphysics into semantics, such 313 that instead of providing novel semantic answers to tradition­ ally metaphysical questions (e.g . , 'to be is to be the value of a bound variable' ) , one provides novel metaphysical answers to traditionally semantic questions (e. g . , 'to have a propositional attitude is to stand i n a relation to a set of possible worlds' ) . I n essence, despite h i s claims t o naturalism, Lewis indirectly returns metaphysics to the position of first philosophy, by using it as a dumping ground for supposedly indispensable ontological and categorial assumptions needed for his semantic framework to function.403 Lewis remains a faithful deflationary realist i nsofar as he denies the claim that possibilia ' really' exist , but simply insists that there isn't any sense of 'existence' that we could use to contrast the actual with the possible. Nevertheless, his inversion of deflationism's priorities constitutes a shift from a methodological to a substantive conception of the relation between thought and Being , wherein this relation is to be articulated by metaphysics itself, rather than being delimited by an antecedent logic. This goes some way towards explaining the more drastic methodological laxity of those he inspires, whose mainstreaming of his ideas gradually u nmoors them from the minimal constraints of semantic explanation under which he operates. If metaphysics is first philosophy then it is licensed to define itself, inviting a range of vicious circles (e.g . . model-theoretically defining models, appealing t o a primitive metaphysical notion of 'reality',404 alluringly defining allure, etc.) whose conceptual flexibility allows their proponents to contort '103. U nconstrained model theory just is metaphysics as first philosophy. '10'1 . Cf. K. Fine, 'The Question of Ontology', in Chalmers, Manley and Wasser­ man (eds) , Metametaphysics. 157-77. 0 m '1 r l> --< 6 z l> ;!) -< ;!) m l> r en s:

31� their way out of whatever methodological constraints the last round of revisionists imposed upon them .405 :;;; UJ z 0 f­ <! --' w 0:: 0:: 0 0 --' <! 0 UJ >­ :r: [)._ <! f­ w :;;; I l l . META P H YSICAL CO R REL ATIONIS M Returning now to the Continental tradition, it is important to see how the Heideggerian responses to H usserl's anti-meta­ physical correlationism diverge from the Quinean responses to Carnap's anti-metaphysical correlationism. It is all too tempting to suggest that the former provide a deflationary idealism that mirrors the deflationary realism of the latter. This sym­ metry is not unappealing: Heidegger and his heirs are most certainly more i ndebted to German idealism (e.g . , Hegel and Schelling) than to British realism (e.g . , Russell and Moore) , and there are many deflationary appropriations of its ideas on d isplay in their work (e. g . , Derrida's tantric dialectics of deconstruction without synthesis and H eidegger's poetic ungrounding of freedom in the ur-event of Ereignis) . However, the essence of this philosophical l ineage lies in its attempt to revive the Kantian thing-in- itself in response to its dismissal by German idealism and its suspension by H usserlian phe­ nomenology. Seen in this light. the various appropriations of the noumenal that it spawns (e. g . , earth/Ereignis differance, , inconsistent multiplicity, Hyperchaos, and real objects) are in "105. It i s worth pointing out that there i s a more recent metaphysical dialec­ tic in the analytic philosophy of science. This begins with Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. which presents a distinct epistemological challenge to the possibility of metaphysics ( The Scientific Image [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980]). Ladyman and Ross's rejection of the mainstream analytic met­ aphysics represented by Lewis can be seen as a revisionary response to van Fraassen. one that attempts to engage with his epistemological framework in order to demarcate a scientifically informed metaphysics (Every Thing Must Go, chapter 1 ) . There is more that could be said about the novelty of Ladyman and Ross's definition of metaphysics, but I will have to leave that for another time.

many ways more inflationary than deflationary. Although it 315 begins as a critique of metaphysics qua onto-theology, this lineage is more accurately described as metaphysical cor­ relationism than as deflationary idealism, insofar as it aims to metaphysically circumscribe the correlation between thought and Being . This is true even of Heidegger and Derrida, who, i n attempting to practically re-orient metaphysics and his­ torically/temporally sublimate the d istinction between reality and appearance, i nevitably found this reorientation upon a conception of appearance (clearing/presencing) as belonging to a deeper historical/temporal real ity ( Ereignisldifferance) . This meta physical remainder is the seed that germi nates in the more obviously metaphysical projects of Badiou and M e i l lassoux, before blosso m i n g i nto Harman's avowedly metaphysical correlationism. To situate this development within our guiding dialectical schema ( metaphysical scepticism � metaphysical revisionism � mainstream metaphysics) it is necessary to reemphasise the d istinction between H eidegger's early revisionism and his later scepticism, in order to explain how Heidegger's early attempt to redefine metaphysics ultimately develops into a paradoxically metaphysical anti-metaphysical correlationism.406 To this end , it is necessary to specify the type of sceptical challenge to metaphysics posed by H usserl, and to see how it shapes both Heidegger's initial revisionist response and his ultimate return to scepticism. Although it may initially seem as if H u sserl echoes H u me's epistemological challenge by disavowing knowledge that transcends experience, we have shown that he does not disavow this knowledge so much as practically suspend it: he presents a pragmatic challenge to . 406. See chapters 3, 4 , and 5 of my The Question of Being. '!:: m --< )> -0 I -< (fJ 0 )> r 0 0 ;u ;u m r )> --< 6 z (fJ '!::

316 metaphysics that proceeds not so much by positing a definition of metaphysics as by foreclosing anything that could be used ::; Cf) z 0 !;;: _J w 0:: 0:: 0 u _J <.: u [/) >­ I CL <.: 1-­ w ::; to define it ( reality/existence) . However, although H usserl 's project is eminently logical in the broad sense of the term, it does not present an account of the pragmatic dimension of thought, and this leaves his sceptical challenge implicit in his methodology. Heidegger's revisionary response to H usserl 's scepticism consists not i n articulating a better defi nition of metaphysics, but in providing the pragmatic supplement to phenomenology required to go about defining it at all. It is the failure of this attempt to g round metaphysics in a pragmatic phenomenology of the unitary temporal horizon of experience ( Tempora/itat) 4 07 that convinces him of the impossibility of revisionism, and thereby leads him to reconceive this temporal horizon as the ur-historical event ( Ereignis) through which we are given unto different metaphysical epochs. However, although this shift i n Heidegger's work consti­ tutes a sceptical rejection of metaphysics, it is no longer based upon a pragmatics of thought from which this u r- historical structure could be derived , so much as a n imperative to pragmatically reorient thought towards it. Heidegger's aban­ donment of his earlier metaphysical project is at the same time an abandonment of H usserl 's logical project-he rejects the possibility of a . transhistorical account of Being by rejecting the possibility of a transhistorical account of the structure of thought. However, this leaves him with nothing to appeal to but the ur-historical reality of the historical appearance of Being ( Ereignis) , and no way to appeal to it but through a reorientation of the attitude of philosophy ( Gelassenheit) and a reconfiguration of its practice ( poetics). The paradox of '107. Cf. Basic Problems of Phenomenology.

Heidegger's correlationism is that it defines metaphysics (the 317 epochal sending of Being) in a manner that outright refuses to define itself (practical reorientation ) , and thereby alludes to a deeper ( metaphysical) reality that the tradition failed to grasp. This paradoxical gesture plays the same role as the methodological circularity encoded in the idea of metaphysics as first philosophy, but it performs the escapological trick more directly, by supposedly situating itself outside of metaphysics while usurping and renaming its role (dos seynsgeschichtliche Oenken) . This usurpation is repeated at each point in the post-Heideggerian lineage that follows: Derrida's performa­ tive evisceration of metaphysics in invoking deconstruction, Badiou 's axiomatic displacement of metaphysics in favou r of meta-ontology, and Meillassoux's tactical subversion of cor­ relationism in the name of speculation. 4 08 The consequence of all this is that the return of metaphysics i n the Continental tradition is very much a return of the repressed-the expres­ sion of something that was always implicit in the series of partial defi n itions through which it was disavowed . What makes Harman's metaphysics so unusual is that it is a return of the repressed without an end to repression-the implicit is announced but forced to remain implicit. as allusive circularity is substituted for paradoxical usurpation . IV. T H E CRITIQUE OF METAPH YSICS Taking these dialectical developments i nto account. then, the question of what metaphysics is becomes an invitation to revise the discipline by providing a response to the demarca­ tion problem. I cannot provide a comprehensive solution to 408. We might also include Laruelle's axiomatic suspension of philosophy's suf­ ficiency in opening up the domain of non-philosophy. See p. 228 n. 286. -i I m () :u =i i5 c m 0 ,, ;;:: m -i l> "O I -< en 0 en

318 the problem here, but I will attem pt to provide an outline of a response that synthesises the historical story just told with (/) u (/) >­ I Q_ <l'. f­ w 2 LL 0 w :::l G f­ ee u w I f- the various i nsights provided by my engagement with the conceptual roots of Harman's metaphysics. Returning to the parallel between traditions, we can now see that each lineage traces an arc from anti-metaphysical correlationism back to mainstream metaphysics, and that, although the intermediary positions this arc passes through are different (deflationary realism/metaphysical correlationism), it always begins with a methodological concern with the role of reality in traditional metaphysics (the deflation of 'real'/the 'reality' of appearance) , before performing a methodological sleight of hand i n which the status of reality is apparently secured without its ever being defined ( circularity/usurpa­ tion ) , and concluding with the methodolog ical u n ravelling of the constraints implicit in the initial concern (semantic speculation/pragmatic allusion-subtraction ) . Given this, we can see that Harman's metaphysics does not so much stand outside this trajectory as present its inevitable conclusion: it simultaneously announces the implicit essence of metaphysics by invoking the 'real ', and subsumes it within a meta physi ­ cal opposition (with the 'sensual ' ) while allusively containing the recursive bifurcation of sense unleashed by this decep­ tive gesture (e.g . , really- (sensually- ( really- (sensually- [ . . . ] ] ) ] ) . I have already suggested a putatively non-metaphysical alter­ native to Harman's use of ' real', but I have yet to situate it within my broader historical narrative. I n doing so, I aim to show how it is possible to provide a non-metaphysical account of 'reality', and how this enables us to define metaphysics without resorting to either circularity or usurpation. I will do this by returning to the questions of generality, thought, and priority from within this perspective.

To begin with, I think that the generality of metaphysics is 319 encapsulated by Aristotle's original i nvocation of the connection between beif")gs as such and beings as a whole, and Heidegger's attempt to formulate the question of Being as the inquiry into the unitary structure of beings as such and as a whole. We have seen that there are roughly two strategies for addressing this connection/structure, corresponding to two different ways of objecting to the onto-theological conception of the whole: the reification objection, which encourages us to think beings as a whole in terms of beings as such ( Badiou and ontological liberalism) and the de-abolutisation objection. which encourages us to think beings as such in terms of beings as a whole ( Heidegger and ontological conservatism ) . Moreover, w e have seen that each o f these strategies c a n be pursued either subtractively ( Badiou and Quine) or allusively ( Heidegger and H a rman) , and that the common element they thereby share is an appeal to something that cannot be made explicit (i.e .. Badiou: deference to axioms; Quine: defer­ ence to science; Heidegger: use of poetics; Harman: use of diagrammatics). The task of defining metaphysics demands that we overcome these appeals to the implicit, but the question is whether it is possible for either strategy to do so without reverting to onto-theology. I doubt whether it is possible to think beings as such directly without either implicit definition, metaphori­ cal allusion, or a reversion to thinking i n terms of a highest genus of beings, although I hesitate to claim that it is strictly impossible. However, we have seen that not only is it possible to think beings as a whole directly without conceiving this whole as a being, but that extant attempts to do so ( Deleuze and Delanda) actively aim to explicate, integrate, and revise the systems of reference implicit in natural science to which _, I m 0 ;a =< [) c m 0 'T1 :;;: m _, )> 'U I -< � 0 (/)

320 Quine subtractively deferred. This sort of approach aims to think the Whole not as the totality of what can be thought UJ u UJ >­ I Q_ <( f­ w 2 LL 0 w ::J CJ f­ Q'. u w I f- (objects) , but as the totality of what really exists (beings) , or to think the Whole as Reality. I propose that metaphysics is eminently general precisely insofar as it is concerned with the fundamental structure of Reality, and that it therefore need not say anything about those objects that aren't real. Of course, this distinction between objects and beings assumes that we can provide a sufficient definition of ' real' in non-metaphysical terms, but it equally suggests that this problem is to be understood i n terms of the relation between thought and Being . The claim that not all objects of thought are beings implies that the study of objects qud objects ( logic) is independent of the study of beings qua beings (ontology) . It is this independence of logic from metaphysics that promises to free us from circularity, i nsofar as it opens up the possibility of using logic to define metaphysics by logically distinguish­ ing thought about the real ( beings) from thought about the unreal ( nonbeings) rather than metaphysically distinguishing the real from the sensual (as types of beings) . This sort of separation and articulation of the relation between logic and metaphysics occurs in each of the revisionary moments we have so far considered ( Kant, Quine, and Heidegger) , but varies as to the manner in which the logical task is approached: in terms of knowledge about objects (epistemology) ; in terms of the content of this knowledge (semantics); or in terms of the practices through which these should be understood (pragmatics) . These revisionary moments are mainstreamed when their initial separation/articulation comes to be conceived metaphysically rather that logically, or when metaphysical assumptions are incorporated into their account of knowledge, content, or practice.

It is worth noting that Heidegger is unique not only in main- 321 streaming his own revisionary moment. but in instigating the turn to usurpation as an alternative to circularity in the process. His Nietzschean insistence that theory is a form of practice enables him to stipulate that his own practice of theorising metaphysics is distinct from the practice of metaphysical theo­ rising; this practical difference enables the former to usurp the latter without circularity. It is the same Nietzschean pragma­ tism that enables him to assert the impossibility of providing a transhistorical account of Being (metaphysics) by asserting the impossibility of providing a transhistorical account of thought ( logic) ; the latter assertion is responsible for the degeneration of his earlier pragmatic phenomenology i nto his later poetic thinking, and therefore also responsible for the repression of metaphysics within his poetic allusions to Ereignis (as the reality of appearance) . I n dissolving logic into historicised pragmatics, Heidegger eschews the only way to define metaphysics that has enough reflexive purchase upon itself to avoid collapsing back into metaphysics either by embracing it (circularity) or displacing it (usurpation) . If we are to avoid both of these pitfalls, our only option is to secure logic's independence from metaphysics-and this means considering the relationship between epistemology, semantics, and pragmatics with which the revisionary moments confront us. The truth i n H eidegger's turn to pragmatics is that it provides the only way to avoid circularity and the forgetting of Being that results: the only way to differentiate between forms of thought ( i . e . , logic and metaphysics) that cannot be rei nterpreted as a ( meta physical ) difference between their objects is to differentiate them as forms of practice. This methodology parallels Fichte's foundational insight that the difference between practical reason and theoretical reason is � I m () ;u � i5 c m 0 '1 ;;:: m � }> CJ I -< (jJ 0 (jJ

322 itself a practical one.409 The problem with Heidegger's turn to poetics is that it severs the link between practice and practi- (f) 0 (f) >­ I o._ ;:: w cal reason through which logic can reflexively secure itself: Heidegger abandons his attempt to ground epistemology and semantics in pragmatics by describing how knowledge and ::; LL its content is situated in practice, and in so doing transforms 0 'thought' into a mysterious practice that no concrete pragmat­ w ::J C!l >= 0:: 0 w I f- ics can describe. The alternative is to reconnect epistemology, semantics, and pragmatics in a unified logical pragmatism, and to use the account of thought this provides to define metaphysical knowledge by means of its specific content, and the specific practices that constitute this content. Given our answer to the question of generality, this means providing a pragmatic response to the semantic challenge posed by deflationary realism: we can escape the choice between cir­ cularity and usurpation by developing a pragmatically grounded semantics for the term 'real' that is sufficient to explain what we mean when we ask metaphysical questions (e. g . , 'What is the fundamental structure of Reality? ' ) . This is what I have elsewhere described as moving beyond deflationary realism to transcendental realism .410 Providing this semantics is beyond the scope of the pre­ sent work, but I will try to say something about how it relates to the question of priority. The important thing to understand is that the metaphysical project of organising a unitary system of reference through providing a unified account of Reality 409. Cf. J.G. Fichte. The Science of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press. 1982) . first and second introductions; and J. Dunham. I . H . Grant, and S. Watson. Idealism: The History of a Philosophy ( Durham: Acumen. 201 1 ) . chapter 6 . 4 1 0 . See m y 'Essay on Transcendental Realism' for a more complete (if early) version of this story.

( Deleuze and Delanda) essentially aims to make explicit , to 323 integrate. and to revise what Quine either leaves implicit in scientific practice, or defers to the syntactic regimentation of its quantificational variables. This is to say that metaphysics and natural science both describe the same unitary structure: Real­ ity is Nature. However. this does not mean that Reality is to be explained in terms of some antecedent conception of Nature (e.g . . as material/energetic. mechanistic/vital. corpuscular/ flux etc . ) . which would simply be more implicit metaphysics. but that we are to understand what ' Reality' means in terms of the pragmatic structure of natural science. and what 'real object' or ' being' means i n terms of what it is to be referenced within natural-scientific explanation.411 This enables us to draw a threefold distinction between the implicit metaphysics that is more or less passively effected by natural science. the explicit metaphysics that aims to actively intervene in natural science. and the critique of metaphys­ ics that enables us to move from the former to the latter by articulating the q uestions through which we explicate, integrate, and revise the fundamental structural assumptions 411. One might wonder why 'natural' science is privileged (including phys­ ics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences founded upon experiment), and not 'mathematical' science (including the various areas of pure mathemat­ ics, formal logic, and computer science that are independent of experiment ) . There is a more complicated answer t o t h i s question. b u t t h e simple version is that Badiou is right to say that mathematics is not strictly concerned with mathematical objects, even if his choice of set theory cuts against this insight to some extent. Rather, mathematics is concerned with mathematical struc­ ture, which. as Fernando Zalamea has pointed out, is far better viewed from the perspective of category theory than set theory (Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics [ Falmouth and New York: Urbanomic and Se­ quence Press, 2012] ) . Mathematics is neither excluded from metaphysics nor the whole of metaphysics (or ontology) . but is rather a crucial component of the project of describing the fundamental structure of Reality qua structure. _, I m (') JJ :j ru c m 0 '1 ;;: m _, )> ll I -< (fJ Ci (fJ

324 of natural science (e. g . , ' What are beings? ', ' What is essence? ', 'What is causality? ', etc.) . It is in terms of this relation between CJ) u CJ) >­ I (]._ � w ::;;; LL 0 w ::::J (lJ � a:: u w I f- metaphysics and its critique that the methodological relation between Being and thought is to be articulated . Although there is certainly more to metaphysics than logic. there is an impor­ tant sense in which logic constrains metaphysics. Metaphysics seeks to understand what Nature is (the question of Being), whereas logic seeks to understand what ' N ature' means (the question of the meaning of ' Being ' ) . This extends to the discus­ sion of particular metaphysical categories and the problems that correspond to them: identity, difference, individuality, universality, quantity, quality, relation, essence, space, time, part, whole, causation, etc. Each of these corresponds to a metaphysical problem (e.g . , 'What are relations? ' ) , the scope of which is determined by the logical analysis of the relevant cat­ egory in each case (e.g . , ' What does " relation" mean ? ' ) . These metaphysical categories are derived from logical categories by means of the concept of real ity, such that the metaphysics of relations is d istinguished from the logic of relations i nsofar as it is concerned with 'real relations' much as ontology is concerned with real objects ( beings) .412 The broader range of categorial questions this opens up expands the scope of metaphysics beyond ontology by transforming its account of Reality/Nature from a system for organising scientific reference to a sys­ tem for organising scientific explanation as such . This gives us some theoretical purchase upon th.e balance between 412. The other way of parsing this is to use ' really' as a copula modifier that makes the metaphysical character of categorial questions explicit: 'What are properties? · could be read as 'What really are properties? ' as easily as 'What are real properties? ' It is also worth pointing out that my account of the rela­ tion between logical and metaphysical categories parallels Kant's distinction between general and transcendental logic (Critique of Pure Reason, A55-57 ) .

continuity and autonomy in the relation between metaphysics 325 and science. The continuity between metaphysics and science consists in the fact that metaphysical ideas are already implicit in the scientific enterprise. Natural science always proceeds with some implicit understanding of what beings are, what essence is, what causality is, and so on; and this implicit understanding is itself subject to revision in the ongoing process of scientific inquiry, in more or less explicit ways. Einsteinian relativity funda­ mentally challenged our implicit metaphysical understanding of space and time, and the subsequent developments in physics have raised serious questions regarding how we should under­ stand causality. The Darwinian revolution in biology has forced us to rethink the very way in which we understand the idea of types, and thus the notion of essence. Dynamic systems theory has provided us with alternative ways to conceive of the modal features of entities, and its development and extension i n the field of complexity theory is forcing us to rethink our understanding of mereological relations. And this is all before we even begin to consider the conceptual puzzles generated by the counterintuitive logic of quantum mechanics.413 Thus, metaphysics is already present in natural science, it just hasn't been made explicit as metaphysics. It is the possibil­ ity of doing metaphysics explicitly which preserves its relative autonomy within natural science. There are two features which distinguish the proper practice of metaphysics from its implicit form: criticality and systematicity. Metaphysics proper is criti­ cal insofar as it properly delimits the various questions with which it is concerned and the ways they are related , from an a priori standpoint ( logic) . Metaphysics proper is systematic 413. See p. 273 n. 351 . --< I m 0 :0 --< i5 c m 0 ,,

326 insofar as it attempts to provide a unified answer to all of these questions which takes i nto account the whole variety of a Cf) 0 Cf) >­ I 0.. <l'. >­ LU ::;; LI. 0 LU ::J (!) t­ o:: 0 LU I t- posteriori considerations provided by the various natural sci­ ences. This is just to say that it attempts to unify the various metaphysical debates implicit within the natural sciences as a whole. The autonomy of metaphysics stems from these two features. On the one hand, metaphysics has a distinctive rela­ tion to a priori considerations that are independent of the natu­ ral sciences (the critique of metaphysics) . On the other hand, it is the most abstract form of a posteriori discourse, situated within the natural sciences only insofar as it plays a unifying and organisational function in relation to them. Conceived this way, metaphysics stands in a reciprocal relationship with science: it is in a position to provide the abstract conceptual founda­ tions which organise them, while at the same time it must be sensitive to their subject matter, insofar as it is through this sensitivity that its concepts remain open to revision. This com­ plex reciprocity is my alternative to the blunt foundationalism proposed by those who treat metaphysics as first philosophy.

6 . W H AT D O ES I T ALL M EA N ? 327 ::< Having extensively mapped the failure of Harman's metaphys­ ics to provide a coherent explanatory programme, demonstrat­ ing both its impotence and regressiveness. and its proximity to the dogmatic correlationism it purportedly opposes. we are now in a position to see the true significance of these failures. This requires examining one last extended quote from Harman's work, which I think most explicitly articulates the essence of his thinking, and thereby distills the fundamental error upon which it is based . The following passage provides a condensed version of the chapter titled 'The I n herent Stu pidity of All Content' from Weird Realism. which elaborates and gener­ alises Z izek's thoughts on 'the inherent stupidity of all prov­ erbs'.414 Z izek's original point is that proverbs can be reversed into their opposites (e.g .. 'seize the day ! ' and 'consider eter­ nity ! ' ) without losing their seeming profundity. This mutates into something much more virulent in Harman's hands: While the annoying reversibility of proverbs provides a conveni­ ent target for his comical analysis. the problem is not limited to proverbs. but extends across the entire field of literal state­ ment. I ndeed. we might speak of the inherent stupidity of all content. a more threatening result than the limited assault on proverbial wisdom [ ... ] . Now. i t might b e assumed that w e can settle the issue in each case by giving "'reasons"' for why one proverb is more accurate than its opposite. Unfortunately. all reasons are doomed to the 414. S. Z izek and F. W. J. Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom/The Ages of the World (Ann Arbor. M l : Michigan U niversity Press. 1997). I l> _, 0 0 m (/) _, l> r r

328 same fate as the initial proverbs themselves [ ... ]. The point is that no literal u npacking of their claims can ever settle the C'-· z <( LJ.J :::; _j _j <( >::: (/) LJ.J 0 0 f­ <( I � argument. since each remains an arbitrary Master for as long as he attempts to call upon literal. explicit evidence. There may be an underlying true answer to the question. assuming that the dispute is properly formulated . but it can never become directly present in the form of explicit content that is i nherently correct in the same way that a lightning flash is inherently bright ( . . . ] . There is no reason t o think that a n y philosophical statement has an inherently closer relationship with reality than its opposite. since reality is not made of statements. Just as Aristotle defined substance as that which can support opposite qualities at differ­ ent times. there is a sense in which reality can support different truths at different times. That is to say, an absolutism of reality may be coupled with a relativism of truth ( . . . ] . [All] content is inherently stupid because reality is not a content. There are two strands of 'argument' in this passage. The first has only been partly quoted . as it consists in an attempt to show that one cannot use reasoning to decide between any two conflicting propositions by narrativising a hypothetical debate regarding two conflicting proverbs ('a penny saved is a penny earned ' and ' penny wise. pound poor ' ) . The fact that Harman holds to the example of conflicting proverbs while implying that it can be usefully extended to all cases of rational conflict (e.g .. conflicting theories of quantum gravity) is indicative of both the poverty of his theoretical resources for dealing with these cases and his willingness to substi ­ tute rhetoric in their place. There is nothing further to be said about it. The second is the argu ment that epistemic relativism follows from the fact that 'reality is not a content.' This is nothing but a bare assertion of the argument from

identity-an argument that I have already spent more time 329 unpacking and analysing than Harman has expounding in all of his works.415 It should be clear that neither of these arguments :;;: is remotely plausible; but they are not what is interesting about '.'.< 0 the passage. What is interesting is that it reveals that the true 0 m (/) essence of Harman's scepticism is semantic. It is important to understand that Harman has not devel­ oped an analysis of the nature of semantic content in order to justify the core correlationist conceit that knowledge is irre­ deemably contaminated by its semantic conditions (e.g . , forms of sensibility, language games, cultural practices, etc . ) , but has i nstead rejected the very possibility of semantic analysis at all. The background for this move is that the unprecedented progress made in semantics in the twentieth century (following the logical revolution of Frege, Russell , Tarski and Gentzen) has slowly chipped away at the bond between meaning and the experience of meaning, to the point at which radical semantic holism (as found in the otherwise diverse works of Hegel, Saussure, Quine, Derrida, and Brandom) threatens to completely dissociate semantic content from either external ( representational) or internal ( phenomenal ) correlates. Har­ man's radical haecceitism is a reactionary response to this trend, which, in the name of defending our authority over what we mean, retreats to primitive conceptions of external (reference) and internal (quality) correlation, in which what we mean becomes a pure thisness to which no one else has any access. This is precisely the sort of haecceitism (' Sense-Certainty') that Hegel strips to its bare essence and systematically undermines at the beginning of the Phenomenology of Spirit.4 1 6 415. Chapter 2.1, subsection I l l . 4 1 6 . Hegel, Phenomenology o f Spirit. Harman shrugs off this critique o f im- I =i )> r r :s:: m )> z '"

330 In essence, Harman presents us with a semantic parallel of Descartes's defence of our epistemic access to our own <' · z <( w � -' -' <( � Cf) w 0 0 f­ <( I ;;: representational states. Such semantic cartesianism comes at the price of the possibility of knowledge. or a complete and i rremediable disjunction between what these states rep­ resent and their phenomenal manifestation (or the external world and the internal world ) . We are once more monarchs of our own mental domains, not in the sense that we have privileged access to ourselves qua real objects, but in the sense that nothing is hidden in our sensual contact with any­ thing qua sensual object but the truth. Returning to Hegel's dialectical dramatisation of this problematic, in unfolding the implicit contradictions present within Sense-Certainty, he confronts anyone who wishes to occupy this position with a choice: either move beyond it (into ' Perception') and start doing genuine semantic analysis of the relations between concepts,417 or abandon the search for truth . Those who stay within Sense-Certainty are thus na"ive sceptics who are unable to see anything but the nothingness of the self-undermining of their own position, entirely missing the determinacy of its negation and the way this motivates the continued pursuit of certainty. Harman has openly embra ced this epistemic void. He has not motivated the core epistemological idea that he shares with correlationism. so much as accepted it as the price of his phenomenal kingdom. Far from being the metaphysical messiah, destined to liberate philosophers from the horrors mediacy without much further analysis in Guerrilla Metaphysics (147-8). See chapter 3.2, subsubsection I l l for our earlier discussion of the implications of Hegel 's ideas for the theory of qualities. 417. See Brandom. Tales of the Mighty Dead, chapter 7.

of correlationism, Harman is the Fisher King of its sceptical 331 community. He has been nominated to the post not by the multitude of oppressed realists seeking wise phi losophical =< I rule after the dark days of correlationism, but by the legions � of oppressive sceptics seeking a new justification for their m (/) prejudices after sacrificing the previous occupant (as they are =< wont to do with surprising regularity) . r r This rejection of semantic a nalysis goes hand in hand with Harman's wilful disregard of philosophical logic. There is a reason why the various advances in semantics throughout the history of philosophy have accompanied the development of new logical tools (e.g .. Aristotle's term logic (and the Port­ Royale revisions of it) , Kant's propositional logic (and Hegel 's extension of it) , Frege's functional logic (and Russell, Tarski, and Gentzen's advances u pon it) , Kripke's modal logic (and its deployment by Lewis, Montague, Creswell, etc . ) , and the ongoing substructural revolution . . . ) . 41 8 This is because, as Brandom says: ' logic is the linguistic organ of semantic se/f­ consciousness'. 419 To put it another way: logic is what lets us move from meaning what we say (sincerity) , to saying what we mean (explicitness) . The various forms of logical vocabulary that we have naturally evolved (e. g . , 'if. . . then . . .', 'Some, but not all . . .', ' It could be that . . .', etc. ) and the various formalisations and extensions of these that we have subsequently developed (e.g . , differentiated conditionals, iterated quantifiers, nested modal operators, etc.) provide us with the expressive resources 418. See G. Restall. An Introduction to Substructurol Logics ( London: Rout­ ledge, 2000). 419. R. Brandom, Articulating Reasons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2000) . 149 (emphasis added) . This is what Brandom refers to as his logical expressivism. 0 0 )> :;:: m )> z ..,,

332 needed to make explicit what we mean. The precision that this vocabulary makes possible when used correctly is useful C'-· z <( LJ.J ::; __J __J <( in all forms of rational enquiry.420 The acquisition of these resources is thus a hard-won communicative victory (or series of victories in the long war on semantic false-consciousness) , � which has come at the cost of a great deal of d ifficult work 0 D f­ <( I and experimental fumbling by our philosophical forebears, and (/) LJ.J thus should not be cast aside lightly.421 The upshot of this is that Harman subordinates the expres­ 5: sive virtues associated with the logical regi mentation of com­ munication (e.g .. clarity, precision, etc.) to the expressive virtues associated with its aesthetic d imension (e.g . , style, vividness, etc.). This is because the only linguistic resources that let us move beyond simply pointing at the various sensual haecceities presented to us are the resources of literature, poetry, and aesthetic discourse. His semantic cartesianism thus g ives way to a semantic romanticism. It is for this reason that metaphor enjoys such a privileged place i n both Harman's philosophical system and i n the writings that present it. It is the expressive 420. It is all too possible to have too much of a good thing here. and to move from confusion to precision and back again by means of obfuscatory formalism. This is a serious problem in certai n circles. 421 . Harman is far from unique here. There is a widespread tendency to reject the logical tools that have been made available to us (at great cost) as somehow shackling the ways we may express ourselves. as if they are the components of some great logical gulag designed to imprison and ultimately extinguish all expressive creativity. This is total nonsense. It may be that certain stylistic norms that encourage the excessive use of logical formalism are cur­ rently in vogue in some areas. and that these do cause expressive maladies. but this hardly warrants the widespread equivocation of logical form with literary style that has accompanied much orthodox correlationism. In fact. it warrants precisely the opposite approach: the rigorous analysis of style as something distinct from semantic content and its logical expression. See chapter 4 .1 .

exemplar of his semantic picture: an expressive form whose 333 content cannot become explicit without ceasing to be what it is. One cannot explicate a metaphor without transforming it into a simile, or worse, a full-blown analogy. It seemingly allows one to mean what one says without saying what one means, or to be sincere without being explicit.422 However, this picture simply misunderstands the expressive role of metaphor. It refuses to let metaphors grow, mature, and ultimately die, preferring to keep them in a perpetual expressive adolescence. To become similes, analogies, and u ltimately even concepts i n their o w n right (e.g . , t h e classic dead metaphors: t h e river's mouth, the bottleneck of the system, falling in love, etc.) is their expressive lifecycle. Metaphors are a part of a larger expres­ sive ecosystem , and their role is to be consumed by roaming explanatory predators seeking new conceptual forms. If they are precluded from partaking in this cycle, then they play no genuinely expressive role at all .423 In the end, it is no coincidence that Harman's scepticism in the epistemological domain is accompanied by romanticism in the semantic domain. It all amounts to an attempt to protect sincerity from anything that might challenge it. or to i nsist that we mean what we say regardless of any attempts on behalf of others to say what we mean, and thereby show us that we cannot both understand and endorse it. Once the possibility 422. This is the view that Harman defends against both Davidson and Derrida in Guerrilla Metaphysics (121 - 4 ) . 423. It is important t o point out that there is more t o t h e use o f metaphor than its expressive role. If nothing else. metaphor plays an important aesthetic role in the production of literary and poetic affects, which although it may overlap with its expressive role is not to be assimilated to it. Just how the expressive and aesthetic dimensions of metaphor are to be understood, both indepen­ dently and in relation, is a topic worthy of another book entirely. ::;: I '.:< 0 0 m (/) ::::; )> r r ;:: m )> z ""

33� that anything we mean might actually be true is thrown out of the window, the relationship between understanding and C' · z <( w :2 _J _J <( endorsement gets defenestrated along with it. If we know that nothing we mean will ever be true, then the revelation that what we happen to mean is internally inconsistent can have '::: nothing but an ironic hold upon us.424 We are thus free to mean 0 0 f­ <( I what we like. It is then but a small step to the idea that the (/) w :;:: only access to the real is provided by the most free form of expression. We l iberate ourselves from the myriad constraints placed upon us by our language (and our culture, biology, etc . ) , b y playing w i t h t h e limits o f expression ( o r living, life, etc.). It i s only b y liberating ourselves t h u s that w e c a n commune with the real directly, without being mediated by these constraints. In essence, the idea that no form of discourse which aims to speak the truth about the real can achieve this truth ( scepti­ cism) is converted into the idea that the only form of discourse that can actually grasp the real is that which abandons any claim to truth (romanticism) . This is OOO's inverted world: what it takes for freedom is in truth mere caprice, what it takes for self-consciousness is in truth pervasive self-deception, and, most i mportantly, what it takes for sincerity is in truth nothing but a sense of entitlement to mean whatever one wants. By contrast. I maintain that if something cannot (at least in principle) be made explicit. then there is nothing implicit in the first place. There is no content without expression. One can sincerely mean what one says if one is unable to explicitly say what one means, but not if one is merely unwilling to do so. On this basis, the refusal of the 424. Recall Bogost's ironic appropriation of contradiction in his formulation of the liberal demand: 'everything exists, even the things that don't' (Alien Phenomenology, 11).

myriad expressive resources that philosophers and logicians 335 have carefully cultivated over the past two and a half mil­ lennia in favour of purposely stunted metaphors can only be called insincere.425 The philosophical virtues of sincerity and explicitness have thereby been traded for the sophistic vices of i nsincerity and implicitness.426 ::;: I :t> --< 0 0 m (/) =< :t> r r 425. This is to deny Harman's own opposition between sincerity and critique ( Tool-Being, 226). To refuse the critical injunction to make our meanings ex­ plicit. and thereby ensure that they are consistent. is to refuse to be sincere. This is also to deny Harman's own metaphysics of sincerity: ' Everyday life is laced with sincerity through and through , in the sense that I really am doing right now whatever it is I am doing-delivered over to that activity rather than to any of the possible others that might be imagined.' (Guerrilla Metaphysics, 135) To say that the chair I am currently sitting on is 'sincere' in supporting me is to devalue the term to the point at which it completely ceases to name a virtue in accordance with which we could live (or fail to) . Sincerity is never simply a matter of being oneself. Anyone, and i ndeed, anything does this by default. Sincerity is a matter of owning one's commit­ ments and engaging i n the process through which these commitments are tried, tested, corrected, and possibly abandoned. If these commitments are part of who one is, then sincerity involves a willingness to become other than one is, to be pushed outside one's comfort zone in the name of truth. Putting this point another way: pace Harman, sincerity is not naivete. 426. Harman's relationship to the historical sophists is an interesting one, in­ sofar as he champions much of Latour's work (cf. Prince of Networks, 85-95), which explicitly attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of sophism against the attacks upon it by Socrates and his followers (Pandora's Hope, chapters 7-8). However. he thinks that Latour is too harsh on Socrates. and that the lat­ ter's skill as an ironist. along with his professed ignorance, make him a superior philosophical role model. Harman interprets Socrates's famous dialectical prac­ tice as a matter of performatively demonstrating that definitions are always inadequate, and thus championing his own idea that things withdraw from our knowledge of them (Guerrilla Metaphysics, 152). This is a parody of Socrates as bad as Aristophanes's infamous The Clouds. It champions Socrates only by transforming him into an exemplar of sophism. This is because it transforms Socrates's dialectical practice into nothing but an ironic gesture. The demand for definition becomes completely insincere, i nso­ far as it is no longer one part of an expre59 ive dialectical process (the practice :;:: m :t> z ..,,

336 __J __J <( '::: Cf) w 0 0 � I $: of explicitness and consistency) aimed at truth, but a rhetorical trick employed to u ndermine every sincere attempt to achieve it. We may remember Socrates mainly for his refutations of other thinkers, but he equally had positions (and definitions) of his own, even beyond those that Plato puts into his mouth (cf. Xenophon, The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates [ New York: Kaplan, 2009 ] ) . Harman's Socrates is not a master dialectician, b u t a mere rhetorician; not the archetypal philosopher, but the sophist par excellence. This is perhaps worse than his reading of Heidegger, insofar as it does not merely radically misread Socrates, but transforms him into his antithesis.

4 S P ECU LAT I V E DYSTO P I A

Having examined Harman's work in as much detai l as possible, 339 we are finally in a position to carry out the promised hyperbolic projection of a world in which it has achieved absolute victory over its competitors. U nfortunately, unlike the more (JJ " m 0 c r or less rosy pictures Harman paints of a world dominated by l> --i Delandian, Latourian, or even Meillassouxian philosophy, my m 0 -< (JJ --i 0 " hyperbolic portrait is remarkably bleak. This is not a function of spite on my part, but simply an attempt at honest predic­ tion, faithfully extrapolating from the data so far provided. Nor is it a deliberate attempt at hyperbolic hyperbole. If you accept the conclusions already drawn, then the conclusions that fol low from the hyperbolic hypothesis cannot but be dystopian. A world of object-oriented dominance could not be judged as anything but a philosophical regression of the lowest order: a new philosophical dark age, in which we could only hope that the knowledge of the present day was hallowed and preserved , as was the knowledge of antiquity, in order that it might emerge on the other side as the seed of a new philosophical renaissance. The real disanalogy here is that this would not be a dark age of conceptual austerity, limited by the theological dogmas of the church, but a dark age of conceptual abundance, in which a dogmatic refusal of all critical limits would unleash a torrent of speculative noise so great as to drown out any coherent philosophical signal. The crux of this dystopian vision is the central claim of this book: that OOP should be seen as the natural successor of correlationism. rather than the radical critique of correlation­ ism it presents itself as. It has established itself as the torch­ bearer of the epistemological scepticism that has dominated much of twentieth-century Continental philosophy, in the face of renewed epistemological challenges to this dominance from within Continental philosophy itself. I n order to properly < J>

3�0 elaborate this point. it is necessary to trace the h istorical trajectory of which OOP is a part back i nto the heart of the :c: a.. 0 f­ (/) >0 w > f­ <l'. _J ::J u w a.. (/) twentieth century, before drawing it forward through OOP's manifestation in the present day, and finally into the stark future in which it reigns supreme. The following three sections will concern themselves with the different parts of this narrative, dealing with the past. the present and the future. Moreover. they will endeavour to account for the theoretical. historical, and sociological dimensions of correlationism in the past and present. i n order to project them i nto the future.

1 . T H E S P ECT R E O F T H E PAST To put a twist on Alexander Pope's famous epitaph for Isaac Newton: ' N ature and Nature's laws lay open to sight; God said " Let Kant be" and brought back the night.'427 For all of the powerful and enduring positive contributions that Kant made to philosophy, he is undoubtedly the father of correlationism. I have already traced the germination and growth of the nou­ menal seed he plants i n the European philosophical tradition i nto the various branches of the mighty oak of correlation­ ism-both analytic and Continental-in the twentieth century. The noumenon begins as a minimal epistemological limit u pon empirical knowledge that is reified by its opposition to the phenomenon, giving it a minimal metaphysical consistency sufficient to shelter Kant's faith in Freedom. God, and the Soul , before being practically repressed b y anti-metaphysical corre­ lationism ( Husserl. Wittgenstein. and Carnap) and reemerging in metaphysical correlationism and its myriad mutant descend­ ants: earth/Ereignis ( later Heidegger) , differance ( Derrida) . the Real ( Lacan/ Z izek) , inconsistent multiplicity ( Badiou ) . the One ( Laruelle) . Hyperchaos ( M ei llassoux). and real objects ( Harman) . However, I have yet to say much about the wider motivations governing this proliferation of noumena i n the Continental tradition. Meillassoux has already shown how strong correlationism has tended to revive and radical ise Kant's fideism-securing a place for faith beyond the bounds of reason while simultaneously assaulting its territory, so as to 427. The original reads: · N ature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, " Let Newton be! " and all was light.' This parallel between Newton and Kant is all the more appropriate given Kant's philosophical debt to Newton. 3�1 --< I m (/) lJ m 0 --< "' m 0 ,, --< I m lJ l> (/) --<

3�2 claim more and more ground for faith and its cognates.428 Yet open religiosity is only the final phase in a longer correlationist >­ (/) <( Q_ w I >­ LL 0 w n: r­ u w Q_ (/) w I r- lifecycle that begins with the seemingly reasonable demand for epistemic humility and ends in the philosophical graveyard of negative theology.429 To understand the development of correlationism in the Continental tradition it is thus i mportant to explain the historical origins of the demand for epistemic humility and to trace its sociological effects. Although the origins of the split between analytic and Continental traditions lie in their divergent relations to Kant .430 the split is articulated by the first post-Kantian figures claimed largely by one tradition or the other: Russell and Frege on one side, and Hegel and H usserl on the other.431 In locating "128. Meillassoux, After Finitude, "18-9. "129. This lifecycle is most obvious in Heidegger's own later work ( Heidegger. 'Only a God Can Save Us', interview with Der Spiegel, 1966) , its subsequent appropriation by theology (cf. J. Wolfe. Heidegger and Theology, [ London: Bloomsbury and T&T Clark, 201"1 ] ) , and the so-called 'theological turn' in French phenomenology that occurred after him (cf. Phenomenology and the 'Theological Turn'. [ New York: Fordham University Press. 2001 ] ) . But the same dynamic is evident in the theological development and appropriation of Der­ rida's work (cf. Derrida, Acts of Religion [ London and New York: Routledge, 2001 ] ; Steven Shakespeare. Derrida and Theology [ Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2009] ; John D. Caputo. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion [ Bloomington and Indianapolis. I N : Indiana University Press, 1997 ] ) . and the gradual filtration of the other figures in this lineage into a re­ newed discourse of Continental theology. As an additional point, I will admit that the sense of 'negative theology' is quite disparate within this discourse. and that I i ntend less to capture any one specific sense than the intellectual diaspora to which they belong. "130. See chapter 3."1 , subsection I . "131. This schema is obviously quite reductive. not only because i t ignores the relevant interactions between Russell and Hegel (via the British Idealists) and Husserl and Frege (more directly), but because it leaves out independent influ­ ences upon the traditions that are merely less prominent: American pragmatism,

the common themes i n Hegel's and H usserl's work from 3�3 which the Continental tradition springs, it is all too tempting to grant significance to the fact that they both use the word ' phenomenology' to describe at least a part of their philo­ sophical practice.432 However, this commonality is superficial, because they i nterpret its meaning in different ways: as the immanent unfolding of the concept of consciousness ( Hegel ) and as the immanent description of the g iven in its given­ . ness ( H usserl ) .433 Their real commonality lies rather in their use of the word ' logic' to i ndex their ambition to articulate the universal structure of t hought and its content .434 It is important to see that this ambition is not merely epistemic, but profoundly semantic: Hegel aims to account for the con­ tent of thought in terms of the dialectical dynamics through which concepts mediate and negate one another, whereas H usserl aims to account for the same content in terms of intuitive fulfilment and its eidetic invariants. If this manner of describing Hegel 's and Husserl 's projects sounds closer to the work of Russell, Frege, and their descendants than it does to much of the work in the Continental tradition that follows, it is because there is a logical dimension to Kant's thought that the latter tends to discard . Whatever other epistemic virtues ordinary language philosophy, Marxism, psychoanalysis, Saussurian structural­ ism. and the French tradition of philosophy of science (e.g. . Bachelard and Canguilhem). to name but a few. Nevertheless, if we can only pick a pair for either tradition. Russell-Frege and Hegel-Husserl are the obvious choices. '132. Cf. Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit; and Husserl. Ideas I. '133. See my 'The Greatest Mistake: On the Failure of Hegel's Absolute Ideal­ ism', <http://deontologistics.files.wordpress.com/201110'1/dundee-paper.pdf>, for a more thorough discussion of Hegel's Phenomenology and its difference from Husserl's phenomenological method . '13'1. Cf. Hegel. Science of Logic and Husserl, Logical Investigations. _, I m (fl <J m 0 _, :u m 0 ,, _, I m <J :t> (fl _,

344 one can ascribe to Hegel , the sheer scope and raw ambition of his philosophical system indicate that humility is not one f­ r/) <( Q_ LU I f­ LL 0 LU "' fu LU Q_ rJJ LU I f- of them; and whatever epistemic humility one can ascribe to Kant and H usserl, it is strictly limited : they are more con­ cerned with critically circumscribing and securing the possibil­ ity of knowledge (transcendental epistemology) than they are with critically demonstrating its impossibility (transcendental scepticism ) . This means that, although Kant provides the theoretical seed which grows i nto strong correlationism, the true source of the epistemic humility that nourishes it is to be found i n the reaction to Hegel's and H usserl's radicalisation of his logical ambitions. It is at this point that we must turn to the historical context of twentieth-century philosophy and the broader sociolog ical trends with which it is enmeshed . Here we have no choice but to explore the connection between philosophical and political developments. From this perspec­ tive, although Heidegger's philosophy of freedom (Freiheit) represents a bridge between the Enlightenment ideals of German idealism and the modernist methods of H usserlian phenomenology, it equally represents a bridge between the counter-Enlightenment thinking of German romanticism and the anti-modernism of German nationalism .435 One might say that Heidegger ends both the tradition of German ideal­ ism and the original project of H usserlian phenomenology by disconnecting them from the progressive universalism that defined both the theoretical project of Enlightenment and the practical project of modernity (their concern with Truth 435. There has been plenty of ink spilled regarding Heidegger's Nazism, and so I will restrict myself to discussing the conservative elements of Heidegger's philosophy that undoubtedly attracted him to the ideas and rhetoric of national socialism, rather than the details of his involvement in the Nazi party.

as Logos) .436 I n its place, he constructs a sophisticated yet 3�5 conservative historicism that supplies the hyperbolic nos­ talgia motivating both his philosophical obsession with the origins of the Western t radition and his disastrous politi­ cal i nvolvement with Nazism (his concern with Truth as Kampf) . 4 37 Perhaps the greatest irony of twentieth-century philosophy is that so many came to see universalism as a conservative doctrine responsible for the horrors of Nazism. and therefore to advocate some form of historicism. relativ­ ism. or similar pluralism as a progressive alternative i n the domains of theory and practice. It is for this reason that Heidegger remains an important i nfluence upon many whose politics could hardly be more diametrically opposed to his own. Moreover, it is this pervasive rejection of universalism in 436. Karl Otto Apel aptly describes this aspect of Heidegger"s thought as the origin of a forgetting of the Logos (Logosvergessenheit) comparable to the for­ getting of Being ( Seinsvergessenheit) that Heidegger locates in the metaphysi­ cal tradition (' Meaning constitution and justification of validity: has Heidegger overcome transcendental philosophy by history of being? ", in H. Dreyfus and M . Wrathall [eds] . Heidegger Reexamined Vol. 4: Language and the Critique of Subjectivity [ London: Routledge , 2002]). 437. Cf. M . Heidegger, Being and Truth ( Bloomington, I N : Indiana University Press, 2010) . This collects two lecture cou.rses, 'The Fundamental Question of Philosophy' and 'On the Essence of Truth', delivered during Heidegger's brief rectorship of Freiburg University, at the height of his political involvement in Nazism (1933-1934 ) . These courses are useful both because they provide a detailed reading of the metaphysical tradition culminating in Hegel (as the highest point of onto-theology) and because they contrast this with his at­ tempt to retrieve a more primordial conception of truth from the inception of Greek philosophy. Moreover, the latter course is interesting because it reveals the genesis of his account of truth as strife, along with the obvious influence of N ietzsche's early work on the conflict between the Dionysian and the Apol­ lonian and the deliberate resonances its early formulation (strife as struggle, or Kampf) has with the political language of German nationalism and Nazism (see the translator's foreword for a discussion of this) . _, I m (/) -,, m 0 _, ::0 m 0 ,, _, I m -,, :P (/) _,

3�6 the wake of the crimes of Nazism, colonialism, patriarchy, and associated structures of domination , from which the demand 1(f) « 0.. w I I­ LL 0 w °' lo w 0.. CJ) w I I- for epistemic humility that nourishes strong correlationism emerges, insofar as it sees epistemic arrogance as a crucial component of the attitudes that animate these structures.438 Returning to the theoretical register briefiy, to explain how pluralism motivates strong correlationism it is necessary to isolate the non-universal element underlying Kant's weak correlationism: namely, his account of space and time as pure forms of intuition in the transcendental aesthetic. Kant's cor­ responding account of the categories as the pure forms of conception in the transcendental analytic is strictly universal , insofar as it is meant t o apply t o every finite thinking being. For Kant, our finitude consists in our need for specific forms of sensibility to supplement our li mited , but general, form of understanding, as opposed to the infinite divine intellect which unites the two in an unlimited i ntellectual intuition that is thoroughly universal insofar as it spontaneously creates its objects, rather than passively receiving them. In essence, the phenomenal realm is separated from the noumenal realm by its filtration through the myriad limitations and imperfections of our parochial modes of sensation . We briefiy mentioned this core conceit of correlationism at the beginning of the last chapter: the idea that knowledge is "138. It is important to point at that I do not reject the idea that universalism and domination have been historically enmeshed in a variety of ways. Moreover, I support the theoretical concern with studying these connections and the practical concern with resisting them that motivates so much work from the Second World War to the present day. However. I do believe that the anti­ universalism that is often inferred from this enmeshment is misguided. and that it has been responsible for a number of problematic philosophical (not to say political) developments.

irredeemably contaminated by its semantic conditions. We are 347 now in a position to see how pluralism radicalises this conceit, by enabling strong correlationism to claim that the separation of the for-us from the in-itself is effected not simply by the inherent plurality of sensibility (e. g . , forms of intuition, sensory mechanisms, etc . ) , but by the inherent plurality of thought as such (e. g . , historical thrownness, language games, etc . ) . It is this pluralistic dissolution of semantics into a diaspora of histori ­ cal , cultural, linguistic, and even biological forms that mutates H usserl's phenomenological suppression of the noumenon into the quasi- mystical celebration of radical alterity that is the mainstay of strong correlationism i n the Continental tradition. Strong correlationism ceases to strategically ignore the minimal logical constraints Kant places u pon the noumenon (existence and non-contradiction) and begins to attack them as remnants of a h istorically pernicious universalism (logocentrism) . This gives u s some purchase upon the historical and socio­ logical developments through which Kantian critique-the transcendental delimitation of the domains of theory and practice-evolves i nto a larger and more diverse critical eco­ system-incorporating the analytical tools of N ietzschean genealogy, Marxian ideology critique. and Saussurian struc­ turalism.439 There are numerous specific examples of these theoretical strains that we could isolate (e.g . , Lyotard , Adorno, and Lacan) and various specific hybrids that index their con­ nections (e. g . , Foucault. Althusser. and Derrida) . A complete "139. For those wondering why I have not included psychoanalysis in this list. it is principally because its incorporation is filtered through one of these other frameworks (e.g .. Klossowski . Marcuse. and Lacan). There is obviously more to be said about the integration of psychoanalytic ideas within this extended his­ torical tradition and its anglophone sociological nexus. but I will not endeavour to tackle the topic here. -i I m (/) "1l m 0 -i :u m 0 ,, -i I m � (/) -i

348 map of these ideas and their intersections is beyond the scope of this brief historical survey, but what really concerns me is f­ r/) ..: ()._ LU I f­ u.. 0 LU ll: f­ u LU ()._ rJ) LU I f- their envelopment in the peculiar sociological nexus of anglo­ phone Continental philosophy and its affiliated disciplines (e.g . , literary criticism, art theory, sociology, cultural studies, etc.). The move beyond the transcendental in considering the biologi­ cal, psychological, sociological, linguistic, economic, political, and otherwise cultural conditions of thought and action is an entirely natural and philosophically significant extension of the project of critique. H owever, i n its appropriation by anglophone Continental philosophy this significant extension has all too often been misconstrued as a wholesale rejection of the transcendental foundations of the critical project-as an intellectual paradigm shift in which the seemingly neces­ sary structures of thought and action are finally unmasked as contingent empirico-historical configurations.440 The parallel 440. By far the best example of this is the dominant interpretation of Fou­ cault's thought, precisely because Foucault was explicitly concerned with unmasking seeming necessities as historical contingencies. Moreover, his empirico-historical critiques self-consciously paralleled the structure of Kant's transcendental critiques (see the pseudonymous dictionary article ' M ichel Foucault' in P. Rabinow [ed . ] , Aesthetics [ London: Allen Lane, 1998] , 460) : (a) the historical a priori is the empirico-historical correlate of Kant's synthetic a priori. and ( b) the architectonic of his overall critical project (knowledge. power. and ethics/'aesthetics of existence' ('What is Enlightenment? ' in Ethics [ London: Penguin. 1994 ] . 317-18) is correlated with the architectonic of Kant's three critiques (theoretical reason. practical reason. and aesthetics) . However, these correlations should not be taken as a rejection of Kant's transcendental­ ism (as [a] might initially suggest) so much as a revision and extension of his transcendental project into the social sphere (as [b] more precisely indicates). Foucault's later work on subjectivity and ethics provides the best demonstra­ tion of this point: his idea that there are different forms of subjectivity is usually interpreted as a radical pluralism, when in fact it provides an account of the universal structure of such forms of subjectivity (again, see ' M ichel Foucault' ) . Foucault's u nified account o f knowledge. power. a n d subjectivity provides u s with universal structures in terms o f which t o understand particular empirico-

between this critical shift from universalism to pluralism and 349 the sceptical shift from weak to strong correlation ism indexes the reigning doxa of the Continental tradition in the latter half --< I of the twentieth century. (f) Of course. it is perhaps somewhat simplistic to lay the blame for the misconstrual of critique at the feet of Heideg­ gerian historicism, its Derridean synthesis with structuralism (poststructuralism) . or its Lyotardian synthesis with mod­ ernism (postmodemism) . but it is hard to d ismiss the role this orthodox correlationism has played i n encouraging the systematic misappropriation and conftation of the different elements of the critical ecosystem . It is perhaps better to see orthodox correlationism as a lens through which critical philosophy was diffracted and distorted by the anglophone world-it certainly existed as an aspect of the European philosophical tradition . but it came to define this tradition in its appropriation by the sociological nexus of anglophone Continental philosophy. The other crucial factor involved in this distortion is the misinterpretation of the term 'critique' itself. which. in a perfect example of academic idle talk,441 has historical social configurations, complicating the transcendental account of thought and action rather than dissolving it in pure historicism. 441. I am here alluding to Heidegger"s account of idle talk ( Gerede) in Being and Time (§35), which refers to the fallen mode of discourse (Rede) in which one is able to use a word without really understanding what it means. From the perspective of semantic pragmatism. this means having a sufficient un­ derstanding of the word's usage to get by in certain limited everyday contexts (e.g., being able to discuss economic inflation at a dinner party), without un­ derstanding the broader usage which constitutes mastery of the correspond­ ing concept (e.g .. without being able to explain the complicated relationships between inflation, interest rates. monetary policy, currency circulation, etc., or rather. without having any grasp of the various theories about these relation­ ships). In this example, one can talk idly about 'economic inflation', even though one has no grasp of economic inflation. m " m 0 --< ;o m 0 -,, --< I m " :t> (f) --<

350 been systematically conflated with 'criticism' both in the aca­ demic sense of literary and artistic criticism (two disciplines I­ m «: ()._ UJ I t­ u.. 0 UJ ll'. l­ o UJ ()._ rn UJ I I- thoroughly entwined in the anglophone Continental nexus) and in the ordinary sense of the discursive process of disagree­ ment (academically enhanced by the unrelenting negativity of Adornian critical theory) . This critical idleness is responsible for a twofold degeneration of critique in the anglophone world . On the one hand , it has instilled a concern with style over substance, or more concretely, a focus on style over form­ ignoring the structure of argumentation in favour of the mode of its presentation-and symbolism over content-ignoring the implications of a position in favour of the connotations of the words in which it is expressed . On the other hand, it has perverted the conceptual tools of critique-whose function is to open discourse onto its own conditions, so as to enable more nuanced and complicated forms of d isagreement. challenge, and correction- i nto rhetorical tools of criticism-whose function is to close discourse to more nuanced and complex engagements, so as to enable more simple and convenient forms of dismissal, deflection, and i ncorrigibility. Style, sym­ bolism , and rhetorical strategy are neither unimportant nor expressively i nert, but they cannot supplant form. content , and conceptual substa nce i n the expressive evolution of theoretical discourse. We can i ndex the degeneration of critique by exam ­ i n i n g a specific perversion o f t h e core analytical concepts extending the original project of critique: practice ( N ietzsche) . materiality ( Marx) . and structure (Saussure) . I nitially, each concept names a form of concreteness whose analysis is i ntended to subvert the abstractness of dogmatic theory: the manifestation of thought i n social practices (e.g .. the genealogical analysis of ascetic ideals in terms of practices

maintaining social cohesion ) ; the embedding of culture in the 351 economy of material needs (e.g . , the ideological analysis of political liberalism in terms of bourgeois class interests) ; and the real isation of idealisations through contextualisation in relational structures (e. g . , the linguistic analysis of ideal mean­ ings [signifieds] in terms of networks of relations between the words used to express them [signifiers] ) . However, they become progressively unmoored from concreteness as they are d ivorced from specific analyses and deployed in overarch­ ing generalisations: the pluralisation of thought through the homogenisation of practice (e.g .. the Heideggerian practical reorientation of philosophy) ;442 the demonisation of culture through the ubiquity of economy (e. g . , the kitsch-Marxist insistence that everything within capitalism is contaminated by the value-form) ;443 and the idealisation of reality through the de-hierarchisation of structure (e.g .. the Derridean insistence that the ur-structure of iterability precludes the functional dif­ ferentiation and articulation of literal and non-literal language) .444 This amounts to pragmatism without pragmatics. materialism without matter, and structuralism without structure. Continuing along this trajectory, the critical demand to get concrete/spe­ cific becomes hyperbolically abstract/general-philosophical critique reaches its lowest energy state in the reflexive gestures of dogmatic criticism. These critical reflexes-learned tech ­ niques o f dismissa l , deflection, a n d incorrigibility-frequently 442. See chapter 3.4 . subsection I . and chapter 3.5. 443. I am indebted to Reza Negarestani for the term ' kitsch Marxism'. which quite wonderfully captures the hyperbolic cultural cynicism that has some­ how evolved out of the rich theoretical tradition of Marxism over the last few decades (The Labor of the Inhuman'. in R. Mackay and A. Avanessian [eds]. #Accelerote: The Acce/erotionist Reeder [Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014 ] ) . 444. Cf. J. Derrida, Umited I nc (Evanston, I L : Northwestern Universty Press, 1998). _, I m (/) -0 m () _, ;u m 0 "T1 _, I m j; (/) _,

352 deploy the original critical concepts we began with-practice, materiality, and structure-as critical shibboleths that func- f­ UJ <( D.. LlJ I f­ LJ._ 0 LlJ a:: f­ u LlJ D.. (/) LlJ I f- tion to distinguish those who understand and endorse their esoteric abstraction from those who do not and therefore must be cowed by their exoteric concreteness. 44 5 The irony here is that the demand to attend to the specific structures of concrete material practices is all too often an exercise of discursive power of precisely the kind it supposedly suggests we should analyse and subvert.446 However, although this sceptico-critical alliance of strong correlationism and radical pluralism constitutes the reigning doxa of the Continental tradition in the latter half of the 445. This section is concerned with the past and its effects upon the present, but it is worth making a further point about the present and its potential ef­ fects upon the future. The terms 'embodiment' and 'lived experience' seem to be travelling the same degenerative trajectory as 'practice'/'materiality'/ 'structure'. This seems to be driven by a desire to recuperate certain meth­ odological privileges of phenomenology (especially with regard to the affective dimension of experience) that were critically stripped from it by the dominant strains of Continental theory. This affective phenomenological dimension is presented as an immanent concreteness to which philosophical. ethical. and political thinking must bow. and is invoked to this effect, but it is hard to find a purer abstraction than immanent concreteness qua immanent concrete­ ness ('thisness-in-thisness'), as Hegel's discussion of Sense-Certainty most amply demonstrates. 446. I consider myself a pragmatist, a materialist. and a structuralist ( not to mention an advocate of 'embodied' cognition) : but these terms are increasingly denied to me not because of the theoretical content of my specific endorse­ ments of them (e.g .. semantic pragmatism. sociological materialism. math­ ematical structuralism. etc.). but because of a range of seemingly unrelated commitments (e.g. , ethical, political. aesthetic. etc.) that they are implicitly taken to index. Often. these are not even commitments I disagree with (e.g . . t h e distortive effects o f patriarchy upon t h e sociological organisation o f math­ ematical practice). but which I simply take to be irrelevant to establishing the point at hand (e.g . . the unique epistemic warrant provided by the procedural structure of mathematical proof).

twentieth century, that is not to say that it is the only doxa. 353 There have always been Continental thinkers whose work runs counter to the image of thought that guides the anglophone appropriation of Continental philosophy, but there have some­ times also been counter-i mages in the anglophone world that contest these appropriations, encourag ing divergent i nter­ pretations of accepted figures and legitimating the work of counter- hegemonic thinkers. The turn of the century was characterised by the ascendancy of one such counter-i mage: the philosophical couplet of Deleuze and Badiou . There are obviously many crucial differences between these two thinkers, but it is i mportant to understand the manner in which the dia­ logue between them (and its echoes in the dialogue between their followers) enabled them to be extracted from the reigning narrative of anglophone Continental philosophy.447 On the one hand, it had previously been all too easy to overemphasise the Nietzschean themes in Deleuze's thought and his stylistic experiments with Guattari in order to subsume him within the poststructural/postmodern nexus. On the other. it had been all too easy to overemphasise the Heideggerian themes i n Badiou 's thought a n d h i s engagement with Sartrean , Maoist , and Lacanian discourses in order to collapse his opposition _ to poststructuralism/postmodernism back i nto alternative forms of historicism. The debate between these thinkers not only breached the heavily policed border between clas­ sical metaphysics ( Deleuze) and post-Heideggerian ontology ( Badiou ) , but the central and crucially non-metaphorical role 447. The correspondence between Deleuze and Badiou was never published. at Deleuze's request: but the edges of the debate can be traced implicitly in the comments on Badiou in Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy? [ London:Verso. 1994 ] . 1 51 -3) and explicitly in Badiou's Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. There has since been no end of secondary literature comparing the two. _, I m (/) -0 m () _, Al m 0 .,, _, I m -0 )> (/) _,

354 played within it by mathematics ( i .e., differential calculus and set theory) flaunted the taboos of much anglophone discourse >­ Cf) <{ (l._ w I r­ u.. 0 w Ct: r­ u w (l._ Cf) w I r- by stubbornly refusing reduction to either style or symbolism. Taken together, the work of Deleuze and Badiou provided an island of hermeneutic stability from which the philosophically curious could set out to explore those conceptual waters foreclosed by sceptico-critical hegemony. It is important not to overemphasise the unity and consist­ ency of this counter-image. Its novelty stemmed less from any implicit agreement than from a series of explicit disagreements that could not be framed in terms of orthodox concerns. Nev­ ertheless, there are at least two important philosophical trends associated with the popularity of Deleuze and Badiou that we should note. Firstly, there is an additional dimension to their peripheral involvement in the genesis of ontological liberalism, namely, the emergence of a demand for ontological humility that parallels the demand for epistemic humility discussed above. The essence of this demand is a refusal to understand ourselves as possessing a unique metaphysical status (e. g . , as ensouled creatures or thinking substances) that would explain our difference from everything else (e.g . , our capacities for thought and action) and perhaps justify treating ourselves differently from other things (e.g . , animals, plants, etc . ) . This is a form of ontological egalitarianism motivated less by the noetic and anti-reductionist challenges than by a commitment to what constitutes proper causal explanation (e. g . , there must be a causal genesis of thinkers/agents within the world) and normative justification (e. g . , there must be non-arbitrary grounds for ethical judgements). Deleuze's work is more obvi­ ously in tune with these motivations, insofar as his panpsy­ chist metaphysics dissolves any d istinction between thinking and non-thinking beings in a univocal account of Being as

information processing/problem solving, and his neo-Spinozist 355 ethics eschews any transcendent imposition of norms in favour of a universal drive to become ever more adaptable. Badiou 's work is more often criticised from this perspective, insofar as his laudably impersonal account of the subject nevertheless depends upon a meta-ontological supplement (the Event) which raises suspicions of illicit transcendence. H owever, the point remains that the nascent opposition to ontologically arrogant modes of explanation and justification already present in anglophone Continental discourse could only be articulated as an ontological constraint once metaphysical/ontological issues once more became legitimate concerns. The second trend associated with the rising popularity of Deleuze and Badiou is a methodological shift in the way in which philosophy relates both to itself and to other practices (e. g . , science, politics, art, etc.), namely, a renewed emphasis upon construction as opposed to critique. This is significant insofar as it marks a return to cultivating novel theoretical and practi­ cal projects based on philosophical ideas, as opposed to the delimitation of possible projects and the elimination of actual projects that had become synonymous with critique and criti­ cism. Again, Deleuze is more obviously aligned with this shift, insofar as his theoretical and practical approach to philosophy as conceptual creation both enabled his own experimental interactions with other fields (e. g . , painting, cinema, political economy, psychoanalysis, mathematics, etc.) and encouraged others to pursue similar experiments. Badiou is perhaps more sober in his articulation of the relations between philosophy and its four conditions (art, science, politics, and love) , but this does not prevent him from both drawing philosophical insight from them (e.g . , his ontological engagement with mathemati­ cal set theory and his psychoanalytic engagement with the _, I m (/) Cl m Cl _, ;!] m 0 '1 _, I m Cl :I> (/) _,

356 amorous encounter) and applying these philosophical insights to them (e.g . , his literary works and his Maoist political activism) . f­ en -0: 0.. w I f­ lL 0 w 0:: f­ u w 0.. en w I f- Moreover, there is an important sense in which the very feature of Badiou 's work that raises suspicions of illicit transcendence­ his account of the constitution of a political subject through its fidelity to an Event-has certainly encouraged a more active approach to politics than its critical precu rsors, even if the effectiveness of the resultant activism is open to question. Finally, the resurgence of metaphysics in the anglophone Conti­ nental world inspired by Deleuze and Badiou is equally bound up with this constructive trend, insofar as the construction of new metaphysical systems is, for better or worse, largely motivated by the potential use to which they can be put in other domains. At this point one might be tempted to conclude that the conjunction of epistemic humility and critique is entirely regressive, and the conjunction of ontological humility and construction entirely progressive. However, just as the critical tradition gradually degenerated into sceptico-critical hegemony, so its constructive counterpart has begun to spawn its own pathological tendencies. On the one hand, despite the sobering effect of his opposition to Badiou , Deleuze's stylistic experi­ ments with Guattari in Capitalism and Schizophrenia have continued to warp the reception of his account of concep­ tual creation, unfortunately encouraging the production and proliferation of philosophical jargon more concerned with affective resonance than conceptual function .448 This is merely 448. There is simply too much terrible literature that could be referenced here. However. it is worth mentioning the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CC RU) . insofar as they explored t h i s expressive trajectory wi th more discipline and self-awareness than many of those who followed them. Nevertheless. even if their original ' hyperstitional' praxis was not without results. the misunderstand­ ings and oversimplifications generated by their attempt to achieve 'maximum

one example of the way in which the constructive tendency 357 has both fed off, and been fed into, the sociological nexus of poststructuralism/postmodernism to which it is nominally _, I opposed , reinforcing the concern with style over substance UJ lJ evidenced by the worst excesses of the latter. On the other 0 _, ;u hand, despite the qualified character of his own ontological humility, Badiou's work has catalysed the growth of ontological liberalism. engendering an enthusiasm for metaphysical specu­ lation not merely u nconcerned with its explanatory worth but entirely willing to undermine the edifice of explanation itself. This is nowhere more evident than in the increasing popularity of Latour's work, whose avowed hostility toward critique449 is little more than an alibi for substituting spurious metaphysics for substantive methodology, enabling him to bootstrap even more virulent forms of epistemic scepticism out of construc­ tive pluralism.450 We must recognise that both the critical and constructive dimensions of the anglophone tradition have become pathological, and that these pathologies have in fact selectively reinforced one another in various ways. It is only on the basis of this admission that we can understand the true significance of Harman's OOP-as the point at which this mutual reinforcement reaches its synthetic nadir. slogan density' attest to its insufficiency (CCRU, 'Swarmachines', in Mackay and Avanessian [eds] , #Accelerate) . 449. B. Latour 'Why has Critique Run out of Steam? ', in Critical Inquiry 30 (2004 ) . 4 50. See chapter 3.4 . subsection IV. m m m 0 ,, _, I m lJ )> UJ _,

2. TH E S I N S O F TH E PRESENT We cannot discuss the emergence of OOP o r its sociohistori­ cal significance without beginning with Speculative Realism.451 Obviously, Harman was in the process of developing his meta­ physical system long before the 2007 workshop from which SR takes its name. but his work only became popular after, and largely as a result of, its association with the exciting new trend in Conti nental philosophy that SR supposedly repre­ sented .452 It is important to understand that the somewhat unexpected excitement (and derision) with which SR was greeted in anglophone Continental circles was a direct result of the intellectual climate examined in the previous section. Not only did it represent an attempt to break with the dynamic of translation and commentary u pon Continental thinkers within which much anglophone scholars h i p was trapped , announcing the possibility of doing original p h i losophical work that was nevertheless in dialogue with the Continent, but it also seemed to reinforce and extend the break with the sceptico-critical hegemony begun by the ascendance of Deleuze and Badiou in the anglophone canon. The reason for this was precisely that the four thinkers grouped by SR (Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, lain Hamilton Grant, and Graham Harman) had ral lied a round a diagnosis and criti­ cism of the conceptual core of this hegemony-orthodox correlationism-as laid out in Meillassoux's A fter Finitude. However, although this i nvolved a common commitment to 451. For a more detailed reflection on SR, see Ray Brassier's postscript below. 452. This wider popularity followed the 2007 publication of the transcript of this workshop in Co/lopse Vol. 3. 359 _, I m en z en 0 ,, _, I m -u ;u m en m z _,

360 metaphysics453 in opposition to the avowedly antimetaphysi­ cal orthodoxy, there were not only substantive divergences r­ z U.J (/) U.J "' 0.. U.J I >­ LL 0 (/) z Ui U.J I r- between their metaphysical projects, but perhaps even more serious divergences in the extent to which their projects broke with the other elements of this orthodoxy. Meillassoux's work must be u nderstood not only as resu r­ recting themes from modern philosophy (e.g . . primary/second­ ary qualities. necessary connection. why there is something rather than nothing. etc . ) . but equally as reinforcing Deleuze and Badiou's philosophical engagement with mathematics as a literal discourse rather than a figurative resource. Brassier's work should be seen not only as forcing Continental philosophy to confront the necessity of epistemology (e.g .. in articulating the relationshi p between cognitive science and the philosophy of mind ) . but equally as demanding that it overcome its dis­ missive attitude toward the work already done in the analytic tradition. Grant's work can be interpreted not only as refusing the assimilation of German idealism to the canon of correlation­ ism (e.g . . in championing Schelling over Fichte) . but equally as encouraging a direct engagement with the content of the natural sciences comparable to Meillassoux's engagement with mathematics and consonant with Brassier's insistence on understanding their form. By contrast . Harman's work must be i nterpreted not only as metaphysically re-inscribing the orthodoxy's scepticism, but equally as sociologically con­ solidating its other philosophical prejudices. Harman sides with the orthodoxy against the other three figu res i n almost every case: he outright denies the literal significance of mathematics, 4 53. Although Meillassoux rejects the term 'metaphysics' in favour of 'specu­ lation', we have already explained the extent to which this is more terminologi­ cal than substantive. See chapter 3 . . 4, subsection I , and chapter 3.5.

recklessly liquidates epistemology, flagrantly caricatures ana- 351 lytic philosophy, reliably collapses idealism into correlationism, and proudly ignores the results of natural science. On this basis, it is hard not to see OOP as a natural out­ growth of the orthodoxy in both content and character, but it does break with the sceptico-critical hegemony in one impor­ tant respect: Harman repeatedly rejects the project of critique in favour of the sorts of constructive philosophical intervention performed by Deleuze, Badiou, and ( paradigmatically) Latour. Already in Tool-Being, he opposes his own 'sincere' approach to entities to the 'critical' approach of orthodox Heideggerians: I nstead of structural aloofness and quasi-transcendental doubt, what philosophy now needs above all else is an injection of sheer naivete-not the pathetic innocence of a burglary victim. but the innate candor with which circus clowns handle everything from cowbells to puppies to dynamite. 454 This clownish na'fvete is Harman's alibi for his methodological obliviousness: an excuse to return to precritical metaphys­ ics while simultaneously preserving a number of d istinctly postcritical attitudes concerning knowledge, meaning, math­ ematics and science. Essentially, he separates the sceptical terminus of the trajectory of critique from its methodologi ­ c a l origi n , freeing Kant's noumenal legacy from a n y residwal universalism once and for all. However. it is worth exploring · how this move relates to the conflation of 'critique' with 'criticism' discussed earlier,455 because Harman's rejection of critique has less to do with any positive engagement with its 454. Tool-Being, 238. 455. See chapter 4 .1 . --i I m (J) z (J) 0 ,., --i I m " :u m (J) m z --i

362 methodological origins than with his exclusive focus u pon 'criticism' in both its argumentative and literary/artistic (or f­ z w (/J w r:t: D.. w I f­ LL 0 (/J z (/J w I f- cultural) senses. To elaborate: it is important to see that Harman's attacks upon critique are not so much concerned with the practice of delimiting possi ble positions as with the the practice of disa­ greement as such -his cultivated na"lvete is more of a response to philosophical cynicism than to excessive methodological caution.456 Now, I have already discussed the ways in which the degeneration of critique has engendered this sort of cynicism through the proliferation of a number of discursive pathologies, for instance, enabling the evasion of difficult disagreements by facilitating easy dismissal. Yet it is not these pathologies with which Harman takes issue. Rather, he challenges the presumption that the worth of philosophical positions is to be gauged primarily in terms of the strength of the arguments presented for and against them. We have already come across this particular feature of Harman's position, in his attempt to generalise Z izek's point about the stupidity of all proverbs into a claim about the stupidity of all content-a naked rhetorical gesture in which all explicit claims, no matter how precise, no matter whether they concern philanthropy, philosophy, or physics, are reduced to the l evel of vague folk wisdom.457 Of course, insofar as this constitutes an attack upon the value of argumentation in favour of the value of rhetoric. it is admirably performative; but it is not the only arrow that Harman has let fly on the topic. He elaborates his views on the role of argument more extensively in Prince of Networks: "1 56. See p. 29 n. 17. "1 57. See chapter 3.6.

I reject the suggestion of Meillassoux and many analytic thinkers 363 that philosophy plays out primarily at the level of explicit, deduc­ tive argument from clear first principles. With Whitehead I hold --i I m that "logical contradictions [ ... ] are the most gratuitous of errors; � and usually they are trivial . [And that] after criticism. systems 0 z en "Tl do not exhibit mere illogicalities. They suffer from inadequacy and incoherence' [ ... ] Neither Meillassoux nor anyone else in philosophy simply follows a remorseless chain of deductions without stepping back from time to time and looking at whether these deductions describe the world accurately. Mathemat­ ics may proceed in this way, but I agree with Whitehead that philosophy cannot. And as for the natural sciences, not only do they not proceed through sheer logical deduction-they do not even acknowledge contradiction as their major principle of discovery. 458 The first thing to notice here is that Harman associates explic­ itness not only with deductive reasoning, but a fortiori with deduction from first principles (or axioms) . The second is that he understands this deductive approach to argumentation as essentially mathematical. The third and final point to note is that he implies that this approach takes logical contradiction as its ' major principle of d iscovery'. Taken together. these constitute a rather extreme caricature of the role of argu­ ment in philosophy, suggesting that the rejection of either of two non-equivalent claims- (a) that philosophy proceeds by deduction from first principles, or (b) that philosophy pro­ ceeds in the same manner as mathematics-entails that one should weaken (or even abandon) the rational constraints of 4 58. Prince of Networks, 173-4 . --i I m ll :0 m en m z --i

364 explicitness and consistency. 4 59 This results in a decrease in the value of argument, which Harman attempts to leverage f­ z w (/} w 0:: n_ w I f­ u.. 0 (/} z (/} w I f- into a corresponding increase in the value of rhetoric: Rhetoric has as much power as argument in establishing new paradigms in both science and philosophy. This is not because 'people are not always rational and you sometimes have to appeal to their emotions to make them see the light'. I nstead, it is due to Whitehead 's point about the inability of arguments. propositions. explicit evidence. or tangible qualities to do full justice to the world. [ ... ] To say that a philosophy is made of arguments is like saying that an apple is nothing but a bundle of qualities-that there is nothing more to the apple than the sum of its explicit traits. [ ... ] Against this ' bundle of qualities' theory, I have said that we must uphold objects. And against the idea of philoso­ phies as 'arguments', we must defend a model of philosophy as object-oriented. Analytic philosophy has given us more 'knock­ down arguments' than the human race has ever known, yet it is not clear that we have achieved a Golden Age of philosophy in return. 460 By now H a rman's strategy should be familiar: j ust as he inflates Z izek's o bservation that conflicting proverbs a re equipollent into the claim that the justification of every state­ ment is undecidable, so he inflates Whiteheaq 's advice not to treat philosophy as if it were mathematics i nto the claim that philosophies are something other than statements and their justifications. The real meaning of both g nomic prov­ erbs and intricate philosophies always withdraws behind their 459. Which, as I have argued earlier, amounts to abandoning sincerity (chapter 3.6). 460. Prince of Networks. 175.

words-as an i mplicit insight that can never be explicitly 365 expressed , but only allusively i nvoked . In dissecting Harman's caricature of argument, we should --< I m begi n by noting that even mathematics does not proceed by !'!! means of 'a remorseless chain of deductions'. This is because there is a practical difference between its context of discov­ ery-i n which imaginative variation and abductive experimen­ tation are paramount-and its context of justification- i n which formal explicitness a n d deductive consistency are para­ mount. 461 The distinction between these contexts is operative outside mathematics. even if it is differently articulated in philosophy-whose mode of discovery involves bringing axi­ oms into question (e.g .. exploring the reasons why we might accept or reject the principle of sufficient reason)-and natural science-whose mode of discovery underwrites its mode of justification (e.g . , defending the standard model on the basis of the experimental discovery of the H iggs boson) . Moreover. these differences modify the requirements of explicitness and consistency: the explicitness of philosophical theories can no more be secured by the stipulation of axioms than the con­ sistency of natural-scientific theories can be secured without experimental testing .462 Regardless. explicitness and consist­ ency are principally constraints upon justification, rather than discovery. Although it is undoubtedly the case that the dia­ lectical process of making explicit and revising our theoretical 461. A particularly nuanced account of the creativity involved in mathematical discovery is provided by Zalamea in part three of his Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mothematics. 462. Brandom gives an illuminating account of the objectivity of empirical dis­ course based on the ability of experiment to force us to revise inconsistencies in the Inferential commitments that constitute the content of our empirical concepts (Between Saying and Doing, chapter 6) . z (/) 0 .,., --< I m "U ;u m (/) m z --<

366 commitments by divesting ourselves of their contradictions con play an i mportant role i n practices of discovery,463 the .... z w (/) w 0: a.. w I .... u.. motive force of these contradictions derives from the role they must play in procedures of justification, namely, withholding warrant from the theories that contain them.464 The claim that many, if not most. contradictions we actually 0 (/) z uncover are trivial and uninteresting in the context of discovery w I .... of justification. and a fortiori no reason to weaken the ideal of er.; is no reason to weaken the ideal of consistency in the context explicitness, because these ideals are constitutive features of the normative structure of justification itself. This is certainly not the conclusion that Whitehead is trying to draw from this claim. It is worth quoting the relevant section of Process and Reality at length: T h e second condition for t h e success o f imaginative construc­ tion is unflinching pursuit of the two rationalistic ideals, coher­ ence and logical perfection. [ . . . ] Logical perfection does not here require any detailed explanation. An example of its importance is afforded by the role of mathematics in the restricted field of natural science. [ ... ] The requirement of coherence is the great preservative of rationalistic sanity. But the validity of its criticism 463. lmre Lakatos's masterful Proofs ond Refutations (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1976) presents an excellent analysis of the way this dialectical process plays out in mathematics, by means of an exquisite recon­ struction of the history of the Euler conjecture and the associated definition of polyhedra. 464. Brandom has an illuminating account of the pragmatics of this procedure in terms of the normative statuses of commitment and entitlement ( Moking It Explicit. chapter 3). wherein incompatibility between commitments (which results in contradiction when they are jointly held) is defined as commitment to one precluding entitlement to the other (such that commitment to both precludes entitlement to either) .

is not always admitted. If we consider philosophical controversies. 367 we shall find that disputants tend to require coherence from their adversaries. and to grant dispensations to themselves. It has been remarked that a system of philosophy is never refuted: it is only abandoned. The reason is that logical contradictions, except as temporary slips of the mind-plentiful , though temporary­ are the most gratuitous of errors; and usually they are trivial. Thus, after criticism, systems do not exhibit mere illogicalities. They suffer from inadequacy and incoherence. Failure to include some obvious elements of experience in the scope of the system is met by boldly denying the facts. Also while a philosophical sys­ tem retains any charm of novelty, it enjoys a plenary indulgence for its failures in coherence. But after a system has acquired orthodoxy, and is taught with authority, it receives a sharper criticism. Its denials and its i ncoherences are found intolerable. and a reaction sets in. 465 If we parse this passage carefully, we can see that White­ head 's point has nothing to do with 'the inability of arguments, propositions, explicit evidence, or tangible qualities to do full justice to the world '. Although he distinguishes adequacy and coherence (or simply 'coherence') from explicitness and consistency (or simply ' logical perfection' ) , he does not oppose the former to the latter as Harman opposes rhetoric to argument. One need only attend to Whitehead 's defini­ tion of i ncoherence as 'the arbitrary disconnection of first principles'466 to see that it is a matter of inferential economy 465. A.N. Whitehead. Process and Reality ( New York: Free Press. 1978), 5-6. "166. Ibid . . 6. Whitehead helpfully discusses the metaphysical trajectory from Descartes. through Spinoza. to h imself as an example of increasing systemic coherence. -I I m Cf) z Cf) 0 ,, -I I m -0 ;a m Cf) m z -I

368 rather than persuasive presentation .467 Whitehead 's point is that coherence is a distinct feature of the normative structure 1z w (/) w Ct: O,_ w I I­ LL 0 (/) z Ui w I I- of justification, and that appeals to it are more frequent in philosophical argument than appeals to consistency, despite being more difficult to formulate and carrying less immediate force. While we must not tolerate inconsistency, it is relatively easy to correct it by abandoning the offending commitments, whereas we can and do tolerate incoherence to some extent. partly because it is a matter of degree, and partly because it is not so easily corrected. This means that. although incoher­ ence cannot give us the brute reason to reject a theory that i nconsistency does, coherence can give us subtle reasons to favour one theory over another that consistency cannot. It is important to see that Harman's attack on argumenta­ tive criticism aligns him with the epistemological scepticism of the hegemony, even while it distances him from its affective cynicism. However, it is equally important to see that he per­ forms a corresponding defence of cultural criticism (e.g . , Clem­ ent G reenberg , Marshall McLuhan. and Cleanth Brooks)468 that aligns him with the semantic romanticism of degenerate critique, even while it feeds i nto the affective enthusiasm of uncon­ strained construction .469 Harman deploys his metaphysical resources to free the expressive dimensions of style, metaphor, 467. It is worth pointing out that Kant defines reason as the faculty of infer­ ence. and its cognitive role as establishing an economy of principles of precisely the kind that Whitehead is discussing (Critique of Pure Reason A299-302). 468. Cf. Harman. The Revenge of the Surface: Heidegger. McLuhan, and Green­ berg ' ( http://dar.aucegypt.edu/bitstream/handle/10526/3640/harman-1 . pdf? sequence=1 ) ; and Harman's own extensive remarks on literary criticism and their application to Lovecraft in Weird Realism. 469. See chapter 3.6 for a detailed discussion of the conceptual con­ nection between epistemological scepticism and semantic romanticism in Harman's work.

and rhetoric from their subordination to the content of explicit 369 arguments, going so far as to radicalise the hegemonic concern with style over substance by converting style into substance, and thereby transforming content into its accident: We can say of any object that it is not a bundle of specific quali­ ties, nor a bare unitary substratum, but rather a sty/e. 470 What we are here calling content can be identified with what we have also called the sensual realm. While real objects and qualities always withdraw from access, and are incommensurable with any form of presence, we are always pressed up against sensual objects and qualities just as the faces of children are pressed against the windows of toy stores and pet shops. This is the world of content, and content is a world of sincerity. 471 We have already examined this metaphysics of sincerity in some detail, but we are only now in a position to describe its role i n severing the association between cultural criti­ cism and critique, and thereby transposing the former to a new constructive register: its purpose is not just to protect cultural criticism from the naive seriousness of philosophical literalism. but equally to liberate it from the suffocating irony that has persisted since the advent of postmodernity.472 I n Harman's work, t h e seemingly counter-hegemonic desires for '170. Guerrilla Metaphysics, 55. '171. Weird Realism. 25'1 . '172. The return to sincerity in the face of postmodern irony is by now a well established gesture in cultural criticism, as evidenced by "The New Sincerity', but it is not for that matter unwarranted. Its best advocate in literary criticism remains David Foster Wallace ('E U nibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction', Review of Contemporary Fiction 13:2 [Summer 1993] . 1 51 ) . _, I m (/) z (/) 0 ,, _, I m -0 :0 m (/) m z _,

370 constructive philosophical i ntervention in and sincere critical engagement with practices such as science, politics, and >­ z U.J (/) U.J 0: o._ U.J I >-­ "0 (/) z (ii U.J I >-- art converge to produce a form of philosophical criticism opposed to critical philosophy. The hypothesis that aesthetics is first philosophy ultimately results in philosophy relating to everything in aesthetic terms. such that the already fine line between philosophy of art and art criticism collapses, and the constructive interventions of political philosophy and the philosophy of science are substituted for critical appraisals of political and scientific developments as if they were intel­ lectual fashions. This essentially replaces the standards of argumentative criticism with those of cultural criticism: valuing refinement of taste over sensitivity to reasons. feel for holistic shape over attention to devi lish details, and-above all­ imaginative elegance over rational coherence. If this is where serious na'ivete leads us, then perhaps na·ive seriousness is preferable. N evertheless, it is worth briefly entertaining Harman's aesthetic hypothesis as applied to the criticism of philosophy, as this can potentially reveal more about how his own work functions sociologically. If nothing else, it qan help us answer the following question: Given that the arguments for OOP are, at best, simply underdeveloped and, at worst, blatant non sequiturs, why has it become so popular? Let us approach this question by considering the extension of his account of style as substance i nto the area of philosophical writing, in Prince of Networks: This suggests a good definition of a minor author. minor charac­ ter, minor concept. minor invention. or minor argument: one that is reducible to content. The more a person, object. or idea can be summarized in a list of univocal assertions. the less substantial

they are, since substance always wears different costumes when 371 seen from various angles. This has important stylistic implications for ph�osophy. Against the programmefor philosophy written in 'good plain English', I hold that it should be written in good vivid English. Plain speech contains clear statements that are -i I m '2 z en 0 ,, forgotten as soon as their spokesman closes his mouth, since they have already said all that they are capable of saying. But vivid speech forges new concepts that take on a life their own, like good fictional characters. It ensures that Leibniz's monad and Kant's Ding an sich will haunt the dreams of the future despite endless 'refutations' of both. Here we find the sole but towering advantage of continental philosophy over its analytic rival-the awareness that a philosophy is more than a list of true and false arguments.473 This opposition between clarity and vividness transposes that between argumentative explicitness and rhetorical potency into a stylistic key. I have spent a good deal of this book trying to redress the lack of clarity in H arman's writings by making the ideas and arguments contained in them explicit. but I have yet to really address the surfeit of vividness that he takes to compensate for it. Doing this provides precisely the sort of holistic purchase upon Harman's work that he suggests is peculiar to style; yet this is not a purchase upon some deeper coherence of its principles. but rather u pon the systemic cohesion of the literary machi nery that works to disguise their incoherence.474 473. Prince of Networks, 140. 474 . Having striven for clarity in redressing Harman's insufficient clarity, I re­ serve the right to be vivid in addressing his excessive vividness. Fair is fair. -i I m -u ::0 m en m z -i

372 We cannot simply ignore Harman's vividness, if only because we cannot prevent it from seeping i nto our cognitive pro­ f­ z w UJ w Ct: Q_ w I f­ u.. 0 UJ z UJ w I f- cesses whenever we attempt to engage the intellectual con­ tent of his work, his unctuous prose leaving a sticky residue of extraneous adjectives (e.g . , 'piles of vacuous i nert matter that swarm through empty space', 'a starry, windy space of transcendent vision', 'either a colourful swarm of disjoined qualities, or unitary lumps of inarticulate pulp') and superfluous similies (e.g . , ' radiating over us like a black sun', 'sunk beneath the surface like the hull of a venetian galley', 'resemble escape pods that jettison clear of their original environments') that adheres to our critical faculties and threatens to immobilise them entirely.475 If the vividness of Harman's writing is sup­ posed to give his thought a life of its own , then it has suc­ ceeded, but only by supporting a thriving imaginary ecosystem that shrouds the conceptual terrain much as the Amazon's amorphous fecundity masks its changing geogra phy. The most difficult aspect of writing this book has been cutting a path through this voluminous stylistic overgrowth : disentan­ gling the controversial h istorical narratives and questionable phenomenological analyses coiled around the ruins of H ar­ man's arguments, evading the confusing herds of examples unleashed by his insatiable lust for lists, all the while capturing and domesticating the predatory metaphors he has left lying i n wait for u nwary critics. The purpose of the expedition catalogued in these pages has been to explore the theoretical landscape thoroughly 4 7 5 . T h e stylistic examples are taken from a broad selection o f Harman's works, but I have deliberately not taken any from Circus Philosophicus, pre­ cisely because it takes Harman's stylistic vices to their logical extreme. As such. it deserves to be read independently, as a sort of cautionary tale.

enough to prove that the philosophical paradise Harman 373 promised us is nowhere to be found therein; that it was never more than a metaphysical mirage, another lost city of gold luring the avaricious to their doom. However, in the process we have seen that Harman's writing style effects more than mere obfuscation. This emerged most clearly in our analyses of the argument from execution476 and the fourfold diagram ,477 whose cultivated tensions do more than d isguise gaps i n a rg umentation, generating paradoxes whose constitutive irreducibility to expressible content simulates precisely the s.ort of depth Harman aspires to. These paradoxes are the heart of Harman's l iterary machine: they i nterlock with his rhetorical armamentarium and metaphorical menagerie to form an engine which, lubricated by stylistic snake oil, projects the withdrawn essence of withdrawn essence beyond any pos­ sible presentation, oriented by a conceptual vanishing point at which coherence converges with inconsistency. If nothing else, Harman's writing is proof that vividness can be used to conjure the illusion of conceptual substance as easily as it can be used to secure the persistence of genuine innovation. It is thus no mystery that Harman's writing style is a cru­ cial element of OOP's popularity. Its easygoing accessibility is deceptive: it lures us i nto his grandiose metaphysical picture by enticing us with paradoxes, while its literary excesses distract us from the fact that these paradoxes are never really resolved . However, there is more to Harman's work than his remarkable ability to fabricate affective edification. If we are to provide a complete explanation of its popularity, we must acknowledge that his philosophy displays a certai n seductive coherence 476. See chapter 2.1 . subsection I L 477. See chapter 3 . .4 . subsection V. .... I m � z (/) 0 ,, .... I m -0 "' m (/) m z ....

374 that transcends mere rhetorical cohesion , precisely because it overcomes an 'arbitrary disconnection of first principles' of 1-­ z w (/) w 0: a_ w I I­ LL 0 (/) z (/) w I I- the sort that Whitehead criticises. The reason this is not always obvious is that the 'first principles' in question are not usually presented as such, either by Harman or those seduced by his work. Nevertheless, we can begin to sense their outlines in the following passage: Human knowledge may indeed be something quite special. but this does not mean that it is something philosophically basic that creates a vast gap between humans and nonhumans, any more than noteworthy objects such as backbones and glass create such a gap between themselves and other things. No ontologist would ever dream of dividing the world into objects with spines and those without (though for zoology this might be illuminating) . If w e shift to the case of glass. the human-centred philosopher i s ontologically fundamental, while t h e vitalist is like someone who says that everything in the world is actually already glass. though perhaps in a "weaker" form than windows. What is lacking is the most sensible alternative, which is to say that human knowledge. just like glass, backbones, reptiles, music. and mushrooms. arises at a certain point in the history of the universe, but without necessarily forming some sort of root metaphysical dualism in the world. I see no convincing reason to regard human knowledge as of such pivotal importance in the universe. 478 This paragraph exemplifies the trend toward ontological humil­ ity we traced in the wake of Deleuze and Badiou . The demand for humility infuses the argument without ever being raised to the status of an explicit principle; it remains implicit i n the 478. Guerrilla Metaphysics. 84.

denunciation of h u bris, much as it did in H arman's rejec ­ 375 tion o f anthropocentric readings o f Heidegger.479 However. whereas the latter rejection was the crucial step in generalis­ ing Heidegger's account of understanding to encompass all encounters between objects, the purpose of this denunciation is to particularise human knowledge. and thereby to sever the connection between understanding (qua general metaphysi­ cal relation) and knowledge (qua particular cultural institution) . We need not rehearse what i s problematic about this separa­ tion any further than we already have.480 What concerns us is the line it draws from the ontological humility of the specu­ lato-constructive counterimage back to the epistemic humility of the sceptico-critical hegemony. If it would be ontologically hubristic to claim that we had some special epistemic access to things in themselves. and ontologically absurd to claim that everything has such access to everything else. then we are left with the conclusion that nothing has access to anything. and that things appear to us only as they appear to one another. This particular brand of epistemic humility may be couched i n far more metaphysical terms t h a n t h e hegemony is used to, but it is no less amenable to the latter's sceptical predilections. The seductive coherence of OOP lies in this synthesis of the different demands for humility animating the main strands of anglophone Continental thought: deftati ng the cosmological significance of humanity's seeming capacity for knowledge by downgrading it to a capacity for knowledge of seeming. 4 81 "179. See chapter 2.1, subsection I . "180. T h e crucial problem is t h e attempt t o separate t h e normative dimen­ sion of understanding (as correct/incorrect) from the normative dimension of knowledge (as true/false), which we have discussed u nder the heading of the argument from independence (chapter 2.3, subsection I I ) . "1 8 1 . See t h e introduction t o chapter 3 . -l I rn (/) z (/) 0 -,, -l I rn <] "' rn (/) rn z -l

376 It is my considered opinion that this synthesis of o ntologi ­ cal a n d epistemic humility i s the principal source o f OOP's f­ z w rn w a:: Q_ w I f­ u.. 0 rn z rn w I f- popularity. The main reason many find Harman's metaphysical radicalisation of correlationism so tempting is that it neatly integrates certai n foundational intuitions that already overlap i n Continental circles: we aren't really anything special and we can 't really know anything. If one already shares these intui­ tions, then it is easy to care little about whether Harman has properly articulated and justified them, so long as he has made them cohere i n an elegant fashion . This alliance of existing i ntuitions reinforces the convergence of critical engagement and constructive intervention that we have already identified in Harman's work, establishing a conceptual and practical connec­ tion between the pathological extremes of degenerate critique and unconstrained construction. On this basis, OOP emerges as a bizarre sceptico-constructive hybrid that exemplifies the worst traits of Continental philosophy in the anglophone world: it enables anyone to carry out speculative analyses of whatever they like (e.g .. dark matter, direct action , or disco) , analyses whose seeming significance is derived from empty metaphysi­ cal language (e.g .. ' political science has so far failed to grasp the vicarious causation inherent in so-called direct action'), and whose effective unassailability is guaranteed by evasive scepti­ cal manoeuvres (e.g . , 'mathematical physics can never access the withdrawn essence of dark matter' ) . Thus its attraction lies not merely in the fact that it is believable (the combined effect of its rhetorical cohesion and seductive coherence) , but also in the fact that it is useful (the combined effect of its speculative enthusiasm and sceptical conservatism ) . Given that t h i s perverse utility is what secures OOP's pop­ ularity in the last i nstance, it is worth saying something more about how it can be exploited to intervene in non-philosophical

theory and practice. I will now try to examine the ways in which 377 OOP has begun to cultivate an ersatz interdisciplinarity by infiltrating the disciplinary nexuses of science, politics. and art. It is impossible to consider every intellectual offshoot of Harman's thought here; it is more important to trace the manner in which his work interfaces with and bolsters existing trends than to catalogue everything it has inspired . As such , I will only consider the most significant confluences in each case. Science. It is important to see that Harman's metaphysical twist on phenomenology ( panpsychism/polypsychism) is an attempt to defend the authority of philosophical introspection after the collapse of the Husserlian project's anti-psychologism. This collapse was heralded by Merleau- Ponty's admission of empirical research into the phenomenological programme, but its actuality is the cascad ing methodolog ical separation of anti -psychologistic epistemology from empirical psychology that fol lowed . This continuing shift in the philosophy of mind is evidenced by the epistemological subtraction of givenness performed by Sellars's critique of the myth of the given482 on the one hand, and the (neuro) psychological reduction of con­ sciousness to the functional architecture of the brain promised by cognitive science483 on the other. What we see here is a 482. The most famous statement of this critique remains that given in Empiri­ cism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge. MA: Harvard U niversity Press. 1997). but it has since influenced many to pursue the sort of anti-psychologis­ tic epistemological project Husserl began in a distinctly non-phenomenological register (e.g .. Daniel Dennett. Jay Rosenberg. Richard Rorty, et al). 483. It is no coincidence that the most famous advocate of eliminative ma­ terialism, Paul Churchland, was a student of Sellars. However, he is far from alone in forcing the philosophy of mind to confront the results of psychological research, a list including at least: Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Ruth Millikan, and more recently Thomas Metzinger. --i I m � z Ul 0 ,, --i I m "1J ,, m Ul m z --i

378 gradual pulling away of the transcendental from the empirical that gradually cedes more and more ground (e.g . , sensation, f­ z UJ rf) UJ 0:: o._ UJ I f­ LL. emotion, selfhood ) to the latter, leaving no room for philosophi­ cal introspection or those whose projects are founded upon it. Harman's rebranding of phenomenology as introspective meta­ physics is a convenient escape route for those who prefer their 0 rf) z psychological reflection unconstrained by empirical research. UJ I f- twist on metaphysics is an attempt to defend the authority of iii Seen from the opposite direction, this phenomenological philosophical speculation against the ramifying methodologi ­ c a l demands i mposed b y Kant's critical turn. T h e progressive differentiation of the transcendental from the empirical has been accompanied by a more extreme convergence between metaphysics and physics that has tended to disenfranchise those speculative metaphysicians unwilling or unable to keep up with developments in the latter.484 However, in this case, Harman's introspective metaphysics provides more than an escape route for those who have been left behind by physicists' penetrating investigations of traditionally metaphysical topics (e.g .. space/time, order/chaos, causal ity, etc . ) ; it provides an elaborate excuse to suggestively dabble in physics (e.g . . uncertainty, superposition, non-locality, etc.). This excuse is wielded most boldly by Tim Morton, whose repeated invoca­ tions of theoretical physics in his book Realist Magic are framed in the following way: If objects are irreducibly secret. causality must reside somewhere in the realm of relations between objects, along with things l ike number, qualities, time, space and so on. This is congruent with 484. Ladyman and Ross's Every Thing Must Go is still the best discussion of this convergence and its effects.

the last century of physics. For Einstein, space and time are also 379 emergent properties of objects: objects don't float in a neutral void but emanate waves and ripples of spacetime. Clocks run faster in orbit above Earth than they do on Earth's surface. This congruency is a good sign that an object-oriented theory of causality is on the right track. But it's not strictly necessary: if anything the necessity goes the other way around. I n other � I m (/) z (/) 0 ,, � I m -,, ;u words, quantum theory and relativity are valid physical theories to the extent that they are object-oriented . 485 This passage exemplifies the highly opportunistic attitude that Harman's metaphysics encourages towards natural science. OOP allows one to claim the support of physics whenever it seems consistent with one's views, while eschewing the recip­ rocal responsibility to make one's views cohere with physics. This is what happens to metaphysics once science criticism is substituted for the philosophy of science: it becomes more important to cultivate a taste for the weird and wonderful in scientific research than to develop an understanding of its consequences. Politics. There is a peculiar pressure in Continental cir - cles to secure the worth of one's philosophical insights by demonstrating their political applicability. It is thus entirely unsurprising that Harman's vocabulary of 'objects' has been experimentally adopted and even hybridised with more familiar political vocabularies in certai n cases.486 However, the only significant relation between OOP and politics derives from 485. T. Morton, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humani­ ties Press: 2013), 30. 486. Cf. l .G.R. Shaw and K. Meehan. 'Force-Full: Power. Politics, and Object-Orient­ ed Philosophy' in Area. 45:2 (June 2013), 216-22: S. Mussell. 'Object Oriented Marx­ ism?', <http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/object-oriented-marxism>. m (/) m z �

380 its role as the paragon of contemporary ontological liberalism. This has nothing to do with the political connotations of the f­ z w (/) w Cl: a._ w I f­ l.I. words 'liberal' or 'conservative', which cannot be simplistically transposed to their use in describing opposing philosophical approaches to ontological commitment. Rather. what concerns us is the fact that Harman's metaphysics has catalysed the 0 (/) z development and appropriation of Latour's social theory,487 w I f- New Materialism of Jane Bennett, Karen Barad , and others.488 iii and the way this has begu n to mingle with the so-called We have already discussed the first aspect of this-namely, the manner in which Harman has successfully transposed Latour's methodological concerns i nto a metaphysical key.489 This transposition threatens to let a methodological mutation in one area explode i nto full-blown methodological metastasis across the social sciences. spreading to every essential organ of political thinking and dissolving any foundational distinction it comes into contact with : object/concept. nature/culture, cause/reason, might/right. and accident/action .490 It is the elision of the final distinction-the insistence that everything that happens is an expression of agency, or 487. Cf. The ANTH E M group ( <http://anthem-group.net/> ) ; B. Latour. G. Harman, and P. Erdelyi, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE (Winchester: Zero Books, 201 1 ) ; and G. Harman, Bruno Latour: Reassem­ bling the Political ( London: Pluto Press, 2014 ) . 488. Cf. J. Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Pofitical Ecology o f Things ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); K. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quan­ tum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007): and D. H. Coole and S. Frost (eds), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 489. See chapter 3. ,4 , subsection IV. 490. Once more I must refer the reader to Ray Brassier's comments on La­ tour's work in 'Concepts and Objects' for a more thorough analysis of the cor­ rosive power of his irreductionism.

that everything that exists is an octant-that characterises 381 the emerging nexus of 000, ANT, and New M aterialism. From the perspective of Harman's O O P/000, there is a natural symmetry in treating every causal output as an action i n the same sense as it treats every causal input as a per­ ception. From the perspective of Latour's ANT, there is not simply explanatory convenience in imbuing everything with agency ( i . e . , u nconstrained tra nsversal l inkages) , but also political convenience in reducing every social situation to a series of i nterlocking trials of strength ( i . e . , a resurrected and rebranded will to power) . From the perspective of the new materialists, the animation of nature provides a potent alternative to the Marxist materialisms that have dominated leftist academic discourse (e. g . , dialectical materialism ) , and a new way to frame political and ethical issues posed by environ­ mentalism (e.g . , preventing climate change) and posthumanism (e.g . , empathy for nonhuman animals) . Of course, there are crucial disagreements between these orientations- most importantly Harman's open hostility to materialism-but they converge in their attempts to project some form of ontological egalitarianism into the political sphere. The problems involved in doing so can be seen most clearly by considering Jane Ben­ nett's justification of her project in Vibrant Matter: Why advocate the vitality of matter? Because my hunch is that the image of dead or thoroughly i nstrumentalized mat­ ter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption. It does so by preventing us from detecting (seeing. hearin g . smelling, tasting. feeling) a fuller range of the nonhuman powers circulating around and within human bodies. These material powers. which can aid or destroy. enrich or disable. ennoble or degrade us. in any case call for our -< I m (/) z (/) 0 ..,, -< I m -u ;o m (/) m z -<

382 attentiveness, or even "respect" ( provided that the term be stretched beyond its Kantian sense) . The figure of an intrinsically 1-­ z w UJ w "' a_ w I I­ Li. 0 UJ z [j) w I I- inanimate matter may be one of the impediments to the emer­ gence of more ecological and more materially sustainable modes of production and consumption. My claims here are motivated by a self-interested or conative concern for human survival and happiness: I want to promote greener forms of human culture and more attentive encounters between people-materialities and thing-materialities. 491 The important thing to take away from this is that Bennett is addressing a problem of motivation. Bennett's book is not meant to establish the need for ' more ecological and more materially sustainable modes of production and consumption'. but to motivate us to bring them about by reframing our relationship to the world . Bennett's goal is certainly admirable and her strategy seems reasonable, so what is wrong with it? There are two interconnected issues. Firstly, treating mat­ ter as 'vita l ' is at best a useful analogy encapsulating those aspects of complex dynamic systems ignored by the mecha­ nistic paradigm of nineteenth-century physics and engineering (e.g .. nonlinearity, deterministic chaos, emergence, etc.). There is something to be said about the way in which this mechanis­ tic picture has persisted in the popular consciousness,492 but it has long since been superseded in science by a paradigm i n which complexity and dynamism are readily appreciated and analysed non-analogically.493 The 'figure of an intrinsically 491. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, ix-x, my emphasis. 492. It is worth recalling Harman's tendency to talk about causation in terms of things smashing together (see chapter 2.3, subsection I l l ) . 493. Cf. Stewart a n d Cohen, The Collapse of Chaos.

inanimate matter' has been overcome not by injecting life into 383 it, but by refusing to treat the opposition between the living and the dead as a guiding principle. This means that, although the analogy is well establ ished, it retains l ittle more than a pedagogical function, as one way of bridging the conceptual gap between natural science's past and its present. Secondly, to move from treating matter as 'vita l ' to treating material things as 'agents' is to turn this defunct analogy into an unruly metaphor that confuses our understanding of the very prob­ lem we are supposed to be solving. This move is supposed to emphasise the practical complexity that fol lows from the theoretical complexity stressed by vitalism: things have agency because they can surprise us, undermining our plans for action in intricate and unpredictable ways. However, the metaphor is supposed to resonate beyond this emphasis, suggesting the possibility of extending relations of sympathy and respect from human agents to the nonhuman realm, with no obvious limit (should we sympathise with the plight of smallpox, and if not, why not ? ) . This weakens our grip on the problem of motiva­ tion that we started with, by undermining our ability to think politically about the conditions underlying the constitution of agency-in the same way that Harman's pan psych ism undermines our ability to think psychologically about the conditions underlying the constitution of experience. If every occurrence counts as an action, then there is no difference between moti­ vating us to action and causing us to behave in a certain way, and this evacuates the concept of motivation of any useful content that might distinguish it from the concept of cause. The 000/ANT/ N M axis thus solves the pressing political prob­ lem of cultivating collective agency by dissolving it. Art. The greatest i nfluence that O O P has had lies, no doubt, in its appropriation by artists, architects, curators and � I m (/) z (/) 0 "TI � I m "U JJ m (/) m z �

384 the discourses that cater to their theoretical needs. The rapid spread of novel Continental philosophy through gallery book- f­ z w (/) w "' [J._ w I f­ LL 0 (/) z Ci) w I f- shops and press releases alike is nothing new, but even by the usual standards OOP has caused a stir, precipitating a renewed interest in 'objects' and even some avowedly object-oriented art.4 9'1 I think that there are a number of connected reasons for this beyond the deceptive accessibility and perverse utility we have already discussed , the most obvious of which is the foundational status that Harman grants to aesthetics. Beyond providing art with a seeming metaphysical significance, the convergence of philosophical speculation and artistic appre­ ciation i n the category of allure suggests that artists can do philosophy simply by doing art. This is not a new idea for artists, many of whom have been attempting to realise this conver­ gence for some time, but for philosophers to collude in eliding their differences is a new and welcome development. This practical convergence of philosophy and art is complemented by the theoretical convergence of philosophy and art criticism we have already discussed . Although the critical tradition has historically defended the importance of art. or at least obsessed about the question of its importance in a manner that is func­ tionally indistinguishable from such a defence, it simply cannot offer the seat at the metaphysical table that OOP provides. 494. E.g. . Bruno Latour's Making Things Public, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2005; Joanna Malinowska, The Time of Guerrilla Metaphysics, Canada Gallery, New York, 2010: Animism, curated by Anselm Franke, 2010; The Universal Address­ ability of Dumb Things, curated by Mark Leckey, Hayward, 2013; Speculations On Anonymous Materials, curated by Susanne Pfeffer, Fridericianum, Kassel, September 2013 to January 2014; Thingworld: International Triennial of New Media Art, National Museum of China, June to July 2014; Disobedient Ob­ jects, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, July 2014 to February 2015. For one among many art-theoretical overviews, see Katy Siegel, 'Worlds With Us', <http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/07/art/words-with-us>.

However, there are reasons for OOP's artistic influence that 385 have more to do with the current state of contemporary art than with OOP's orientation towards art as such . The most obvious of these is the way in which an 'object-oriented art' can be conveniently opposed to the relational aesthetics of N icholas Bourriaud .495 Whatever the worth of the relational paradigm, its ascendancy has quite naturally generated antago­ nism in the art world, and this organic resistance has eagerly adopted whatever theoretical weapons it can wield against its aesthetic nemesis. However, the opposition this resist­ ance encourages between OOP and relational aesthetics is as opportunistic as that which Harman encourages between OOP and relational metaphysics,496 precisely because the concept of relation is being deployed differently in each case. Relational aesthetics is certainly influenced by a sort of poststructuralist hostility to essence that could be classified as metaphysical relationalism in Harman's sense,497 and OOP is certainly more aesthetically concerned with artworks that are not relational in Bourriaud's sense, but this does not mean that the metaphysi­ cal and aesthetic uses of the term meet in any significant way. The sociological case for pursuing contextualised interactive art and the metaphysical case for appreciating decontextualised object-centred art fundamentall y talk past one another.498 The genuine connection between Harman's philosophy and contemporary art lies in the way it resonates with the legacy 495. N . Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics ( Paris: Les presses du reel, 2002). 496. See chapter 3.3. 497. Consider the opening lines of the book: 'Artistic activity is a game, whose forms, patterns and functions develop and evolve according to periods and social contexts; it is not an immutable essence.' ( Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics, 1 1 ) 498. See 'Art Without Relations', ArtReview, September 2014, 144 -7. -< I m (/) z (/) 0 .,, -< I m -u :u m (/) m z -<

386 of Marcel Duchamp's famous 'readymades', which cascaded through Andy Warhol's pop art objects, before ramifying into f­ z w Cf) w "' a._ w I f­ u.. 0 Cf) z Cf) w I f- a whole range of strategies for generating aesthetic affects by framing u nexpected objects in curated contexts rather than composing technical works that integrate the sensory, emotive, and even conceptual dimensions of experience.499 Obviously, to justify this point properly would require presenting a much more thorough narrative regarding the development of art in the twentieth century than I can provide here, but the core idea can be communicated simply: OOP provides a pseudo-aesthetic justification for the Duchampian gesture after its conceptual innovativeness has waned . The artistic power of Duchamp's initial intervention lay in its conceptual component, the aesthetic potency of which was guaranteed by its reflexive invocation of the complex of concepts (e.g .. art, value, work, etc.) constitutive of the context in which it was displayed . This inspired a general approach to artistic produc­ tion-summarised by the equation : object + concept = art­ the dependable staple of which was the conceptual repertoire of art practice and criticism itself. The reason this repertoire remained at the core of the object+concept paradigm is that mastering and using concepts that are interesting enough to support a genuine aesthetic e ncounter is not easy (either for 499. For an account of the decline of the aesthetic and the rise of the seman­ tic dimension of art in the twentieth century that takes Warhol's objects as its central example. see Arthur Danto's The Abuse of Beauty (Chicago: Open Court. 2003). For a parallel account of the decline of compositional technique and the associated sundering of art into a conceptual strand increasingly ob­ sessed with its own concept (the art-loop) and an aconceptual strand con­ cerned with the immediacy of aesthetic experience (the tyranny of feeling). consult Sinead Murphy's The Art Kettle (Winchester: Zero Books. 2013) and/ or my review thereof ('The Ends of Beauty: Sinead Murphy's The Art Kettle'. in Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 24 [2013] ) .

the artist or the spectator) , especially without the representa- 387 tional resources which poetry and literature are able to deploy in order to invoke concepts. The conceptual context of artistic production and display is more easily mastered by artists than anything else. Once the exhaustion of this conceptual staple becomes obvious, and the easier conceptual alternatives (e.g . . obvious ethical/political gestures) have become tiresome, it seems that the paradigm must either return to compositional technique, or cultivate a new conceptual technique. However, there is a third strategy: the retrenchment of curatorial technique. The object +concept paradigm functions by framing an encounter with an object or series of objects within a curated space, facilitating a peculiarly conceptual cognitive affect that is distinguishable from the sensory and symbolic affects associated with more traditional compositional artforms. However, the cultural i nertia of the gallery as an institution allows one to counterfeit this cognitive affect, not merely by bypassing the specific conceptual frame the artists themselves intend, but by making any determinate concep­ tual frame unnecessary. This placebo affect is generated by encouraging the spectator to supply their own cognitive stimulation, on the basis that this is how one is supposed to think/fee/ when one encounters on artwork. The spectator thus comes to supply the conceptual content of their encoun ­ ter w i t h t h e artwork t o an increasing degree, running with whatever meagre h i nts are supplied by the gallery catalogue, the professional thinker, or whoever else has been wheeled out to referee their engagement with the objects in question. The result of this retrenchment is that art is no longer that which 'makes you think', but simply whatever you ore mode to think about in the right setting. _, I m en z en 0 ,, _, I m -u "' m en m z _,

388 The aesthetic novelty of OOP consists in providing a retroac­ tive justification of this artistic/curatorial practice: the concep- f-­ z w [/) w ()'.'. a._ w I f-­ LL 0 [/) z Ui w I f-- tual paucity that might be interpreted as laziness if it were not thinly veiled in various ways can now be openly portrayed as admirable restraint. insofar as it does no more than highlight the object's own allusiveness. OOP's role in increasing curato­ rial interest in diverse arrays of intriguing objects transplanted from their native contexts has been to remove concepts from the paradigmatic equation altogether, reducing it to the bland equivalence: object = art (in suitable contexts) . However, it is important to note that this metaphysical reframing of our aesthetic engagements with art objects does not eliminate the minimal conceptual infrastructure needed to engender the placebo affect. and that Harman is entirely happy to supply his own brand of sugar pills. OOP provides both an alibi and a handy toolkit for a ruse in which spectators become com­ plicit in their own aesthetic deception. After the conceptual desaturation of objects, all that is left is stuff , which we are then encouraged to find our own affective resonance with. Object-oriented art exemplifies the technical shift from com­ position to framing: from skill in producing genuine works of art to skill in interfacing autonomous objects with the artworld matrix. There is a surprising amount of money to be made and prestige to be garnered in the supposedly self-effacing enterprise of letting things speak for themselves. In addressing the spread of Harman's ideas in these areas we are inevitably moving beyond the scope of OOP and into the more general realm of 000. U nfortunately, I cannot consider the more systematic variants of 000 presented by Bryant. Bogost. and Morton without expanding this book beyond its already considerable length. However, I can say something

more about the enticing adjective 'object-oriented ' and why 389 it almost begs to be attached to nouns such as 'architecture', 'ethics', 'geography', and who knows what else. The origi n of the term 'object-oriented ' in computer pro­ gramming connotes a certai n contemporary character, familiar­ ity, and practicality, even though object-oriented programming and object-oriented philosophy share nothing beyond a com­ mon acronym . Yet this doesn't quite account for the temptation to 'go 00-' in other domains. The real source of this allure is the word 'object' itself, insofar as it simultaneously suggests a specific orientation that would distinguish an 'object-oriented geography (OOG ) ' from other geographical approaches. while being so general that it doesn't explicitly exclude any alterna­ tive orientation (other than perhaps 'subject-oriented geogra­ phy', whatever that might be) . Harman's work has transformed the term 'object' into a new constructive shibboleth whose exoteric concreteness ('to the objects themselves ! ' ) is openly vacuous ( 'everything is an object' ) . This enables it to play a similar sociological role to the critical shibboleths of ' practice', ' materiality', and 'structure' identified earlier. except that it enables solidarity in flaunting constraints rather than enforcing them. U ltimately, this new shibboleth displays an almost poetic symmetry, having synthesised the theoretical and practical dimensions of its critical counterparts in an explicitly abstract concreteness, as if the interacting pathological dynamics of Continental philosophy had finally achieved self-consciousness. Metaphysics is explanatory dynamite. It is good for blasting foundations, but it is downright dangerous if not handled care­ fully. You can just as easily blow holes in existing explanatory frameworks as clear the ground for building new ones. To translate this metaphor into a full-blown analogy: the pervasive _, I m (/) z (/) 0 ,, _, I m "() ;u m (/) m z _,

390 appeal to metaphysical primitives without care for methodolog­ ical scruples is very much like the increasing ci nematic obses- f­ z w U) w Cl'. Q_ w I f­ LL 0 U) z U) w I f- sion with complex special effects without care for aesthetic scruples. In each case, one sacrifices structure (explanatory structure and narrative structure, respectively) in favour of cheap thrills. One might call the propagation of metaphysical principles without philosophical justification 'style', and the wholescale substitution of metaphorics for methodology 'vivid­ ness', but in truth these are nothing but thinly veiled excuses to blow things up. It is pyrotechnic scepticism packaged as systematic philosophy. To capitulate to Harman's aestheticisa­ tion of philosophical narratives for a brief moment: Harman may see himself as Lovecraft, Picasso, or even Coltrane-a bold innovator reshaping the cultural terrain-but he is really M ichael Bay: a conservative authority continually churning out ever more explosive (and unfortunately popular) cultural products, which serve only to exemplify the vices of his artform rather than its virtues. 500 500. In philosophy as much as art, one must be careful to avoid associating popularity with vice as much as virtue. Popularity is quality neutral, even if it can sometimes be indicative. It is of course possible that some readers will disagree with my assessment of the aesthetic worth of Michael Bay's contri­ butions to cinema. This is not the place to go into such agreements in detail. I shall simply say that watching Transformers: Dork of the Moon was one of the least pleasant experiences of my aesthetic life. Its only value lies in its compres­ sion of all the worst excesses of contemporary cinema into a single place (and I use the term 'compression' loosely, given its truly tedious length ) . Give me the Die Hard series over Transformers any day.

3 . T H E H O R RO RS O F T H E FUTU R E Finally, the time has come to cast ourselves i nto a n object­ oriented future. Everything that could reasonably have been done to prepare us for the hyperbolic reading of Harman's philosophy has been done, and so the promise made in the very first pages of this book must now be fulfilled . I n accord­ ance with the rules of the hyperbolic procedure,501 we must imagine a world in which the trivial flaws in Harman's work have been overlooked and the embrace of his philosophical picture is so thorough and widespread that even his few remaining opponents must concede its inestimable worth.502 Let us begin with the following hypothetical scenario: By the year 2050. Harman's self-pronounced philosophical vir­ tues have triumphed: rhetoric has thwarted argument, vividness has humbled clarity, and aesthetic taste has finally overcome rational sobriety; his methodological mixture of historical dram­ atisation, phenomenological performance, and metaphysical speculation has coalesced into a new norm of thought; and his threefold doctrine of withdrawal, the fourfold, and vicarious cau­ sation have become the pillars of a new intellectual orthodoxy as powerful and enduring as scholasticism. Harman's legacy as the Aristotle of his era is secured, his influence singlehandedly undoing Kant's Copernican turn, demolishing the regrettable 501 . Laid down most clearly in Philosophy in the Making, 126 and 1 52-3. 502. I will assume that the present book was either left unpublished or largely scorned by my p hilosophical contemporaries. I myself am either dead, or locked in an asylum ranting about the dangers of gastronomic mysticism, semantic romanticism, and pyrotechnic scepticism to any who will listen. It is safe to say that I will not have gone down without a fight. 391 _, I m I 0 ;u ;u 0 ;u (/) 0 "TI _, I m "TI c _, c ;u m

392 monuments of Hegelian thought. wiping the historical slate clean and refounding the tradition on a lineage running from Leibniz UJ 0:: ::J f­ ::J LL UJ I f­ LL 0 rn 0:: 0 0:: 0:: 0 I UJ I f- through Whitehead , Heidegger, Lingis, and Latour. Critique is dead. Analytic philosophy is no more. Copies of Das Kapital and Word and Object are hidden away from prying eyes and exchanged only in secret. The age of objects is upon us. This gives us a rough outline of the object-oriented future, but we must fill in the details if we are to draw any interesting conclusions. Perhaps the best way to do this is to work out how this state of affai rs could possibly come about. What fol­ lows is an attempt to do just that. by constructing a plausible narrative leading to Harman's absolute victory. The first APA conference panel composed entirely of inani­ mate objects is held in 2023, to much applause. The ensuing audience discussion unanimously agrees that the contribution of a small half-eaten pot of jam-whose unknown organic composition, ruptured purplish surface, and burgeoning film of green-grey mould present a haze of i nt�racting ecological qualities that perfectly infuse their collective musings on the ethical implications of the ever-worsening environmental cri­ sis-is the highlight of the whole event. The practice quickly becomes a fixture of humanities conferences, though the funding never comes through for object-only meetings. I n 2026, a small number of American philosophy departments expand their commitment to i nterdisciplinary education by i nsisting that. alongside studying a human language such as German or Spanish, each graduate student must specialise in a nonhuman substance (e. g . , graphite, silk, or nematode worms) , whose features they learn to commune with and cultivate through a series of immersive practical and theoretical studies. This too becomes popular, and is the de facto standard within a decade,

with some PhD students taking out whole semesters to mine 393 tin, perfect their custard recipes, or wallow in their own filth, preceded by a thorough methodological survey of the area and fol lowed by a detailed research report. By the end of the third decade of the twenty-first century the object-oriented craze has spread to all but the most conservative bastions of the humanities, its increasing philosophical dominance and its proliferating extra-philosophical applications mutually rei nforcing on another. OOO's major foothold on culture remains the artworld , which has been increasingly dominated by object-oriented theory and practice since the early 2020s. Some specialised curators have even abandoned the constraints of the white cube entirely and begun to lead paying visitors on excursions to view objects in their native locations, cultivating innovative and tasteful selections of everything from industrial electrical transformers, to piles of medical waste about to be incinerated . to the half-excavated remnants of abandoned quarries, while providing critical appraisals of the nuances of the many genres of t h i ngs. Other guerrilla practitioners specialise in remov­ ing objects from these spaces and juxtaposing them with new contexts, producing strange encounters with antelope i n New York's Central Park and volcanic ash on the London U nderground, or, most famously, stealing the extant replicas of Duchamp's Fountain and refitting them for use in public toi­ lets. Furthermore, the possibility of aesthetic value completely unmoored from any artistic origin generates a new and even more bizarre market for financial speculation, a generalised and quantified allure pulling free of its origins and spinning into com­ plex webs of object futures. By 2035 it is possible to invest in pools of collateralised mystique composed of randomly selected thing-tranches whose diverse inner mysteries await discovery. --i I m I 0 :0 :0 0 :0 rn 0 ,, --i I m ,, c --i c :0 m

394 Meanwhile the political pull of the nonhuman has only inten­ sified . Agai nst the backdrop of economic and ecolog ical w a:: :'.) f­ ::0 LI. w I f­ l.I. 0 en a:: 0 a:: a:: 0 I w I f- catastrophe, the demand to empathise with the myriad and misunderstood components of our social and environmental infrastructure takes root. generating an expanding reservoir of feeling that something must be done, while further splintering our understanding of precisely what this is and how it should be achieved . The affective impetus towards conservation pulls in divergent directions, with those determined to respect the animate and the natural (e.g .. ecological diversity, animal rights. genetically unmodified plant life, etc.) increasingly in conflict with those determined to establish the autonomy of the inani­ mate and the artificial (e.g .. geological diversity, electronics rights, fandom-unmodified fictional l ife, etc . ) . The triumph of Latour's amodernism leaves no principled distinction between the two. and warring factions emerge whose conflicts are won or lost through strength of feeling alone. By 2040 this indirect democracy of objects has produced half a dozen underground coalitions of sympathy who claim to represent divergent constituencies of people, things, and people-things. These mostly fail to have any effect on the political policy of organised democratic states, though the coalitions dedicated to entertaining the feelings a nd desires of corporations and states themselves are a notable exception. For a long time scientists are indifferent to or hostile to 000. However, its increasing pervasiveness gradually wins them over. though at first they are only inspired by it in the same way they are inspired by poetry, art, and speculative fiction. They do not grapple with the arguments of the object­ oriented pop-philosophers who come i nto vogue in the 2030s. but simply let the ideas flow over them, so as to commune with the alluring magma that flows beneath the surface of the

universe their mathematical models trace. Philosophy finally 395 wrests its independence from science, by ceasing to talk to it in any meaningful way. Things begin to change in the 20£IOS as -i I m the spiralling budget for public research erodes access to the I 0 ::a ::a 0 ::a (/) experimental resources needed to test hypotheses at the edge of physics. Those research programmes whose ties to falsifi­ ability are already tenuous seize the opportunity to become fashionably untestable, drawing upon the philosophical weight of 000 in the process. Rhetorical string theory emerges as a bold new synthesis of physics and metaphysics, diving headlong into abstract theory construction with naught but aesthetic constraint, generating unusually eloquent debates regarding how many variations of supersymmetry can pulsate in the heart of the standard model in the process. Not to be outdone, rogue mathematicians inspired by Tim Morton's visceral rejection of the principle of non-contradiction503 decide that rr is insufficiently irrational, and devote their energies to the study of a new set of flamboyantly i rrelevant withdrawn num­ bers, whose haunting symbolism is matched only by their utter uselessness. By 2050 the pathological peer-review system can no longer maintain the fragile link between the theoretical and applied d imensions of the natural and mathematical sciences, and the culture of science has begun to revert to the premod­ ern configuration it enjoyed in the heyday of scholasticism. What conclusions does this narrative suggest? Crucially, that Harman's work could achieve absolute victory in the only manner a philosophy unconcerned with justification can : by birthing a dogma that supplies the ideological infrastructure of more expansive social system . It is this that reveals the age of objects for a new dark age. It also suggests the true 503. Morton. Realist Magic. 25-32. 0 .,, -i I m .,, c -i c ::a m

396 significance of the parallel between Harman and Aristotle: if we ask ourselves how Harman's work could birth such a dogma, w 0:: :::0 f­ :::0 LL w I f­ LL 0 (/) 0:: 0 0:: 0:: 0 I w I f- it seems almost obvious that it could provide the core of a nee-animistic theology around which contemporary hostilities toward both scientific and human hubris could converge. much as Christian theology crystal lised around Aristotle's monothe­ istic metaphysics. To be truly victorious. 000 must resurrect scholasticism and reinvent the social order that supported it, weaving together cultural, political , and scientific trends so as to undo modernity and prosper in its wake. We are still left to wonder: what would this authentically postmodern world look like? U nder the reign of negative animism we would no longer be restricted to effing the ineffable nature of God , Being, Ereignis. or whichever principle encapsulates universal mys­ tery, but would be free to ponder the unspeakable essence of anything and everything: toasters. lint. neutrinos. and the unsettling reflexivity of sentences such as this. A new breed of philosopher-shamans would rise to guide us through these encounters. teaching us the secret of making the everyday as mystifying as the phenomenological extremes of human experience. Even scientists would come to accept that their own pronouncements a re not to be taken l iterally-their claims about the great pre-human past naught but caresses u pon its sensual face-and the faithful among them would turn to writing hymns to the arche-fossil, so as to penetrate its glittering folds, striving toward the warm dark recesses beneath. All this is to say that Harman's metaphysics would inspire acts of intellectual onanism more extreme than the worst excesses of the Heideggerian orthodoxy: failed romantic overtures to noumenal intimacy doomed to wallow in the most pathetic mysticism; a sort of theoretical suicide akin to death

by auto-erotic asphyxiation-lonely, and mildly embarrassing 397 for everyone who hears about it. If we ask ourselves the ultimate question of hyperbolic "'" I m reading-what would be missing from this world ?-it is hard I 0 ::0 ::0 0 ::0 (fJ to answer, simply because so much has been washed away by the tide of object-orientation. However, there is one crucial thing that is missing, notable above all others, namely, the love of wisdom named philosophy.504 Pace Harman, this love is not supposed to be unrequited . Its object is not supposed to be placed upon a pedestal beyond our reach . Its satisfaction is to be embraced as a genuine possibility, even if, as in l ife, its actu­ ality is far more complicated than our desires ever anticipate. 504. I am not the first to express this idea. See Amy Ireland's 'Ontology for Ontology's Sake: Object-Oriented Philosophy as Poetic Metaphysics', <http:// aestheticsafterfinitude. blogspot.fr/2013/04/ontology-for-ontologys-sake­ object. html> . 0 .,, "'" I m .,, c "'" c ::0 m

5 S P EC I O U S REALISM

At last . we come to the point where I reveal the moral of the 401 story. This book does indeed have such a moral, remarkably like that of the children's fable at which its title hints. The fable is never just about a specific emperor, or the particular finery in which they claim to be attired . It's really about people in general, and the way our shared wishes and prejudices cause us to buy into certain ideas against our better judgement , whether we be those standing naked or those who look on idly, unwilling (or unable) to state the obvious. What I have attempted to do in this book is not just to show that a certain fashionable garment is threadbare to the point of nonexist­ ence (the poverty of OOP as a philosophical system) , but also to analyse why many people are tempted to don it regardless ( its simple yet powerful blend of radical humility in both the epistemological and ontological domains) , a nd why others stand awestruck, unsure of what to say or do in response (a combination of historical circumstance, clever rhetorical defences, and surprisingly effective branding) . Maybe it is presumptuous for me to paint myself as the innocent youth speaking truth to power, but I genuinely feel that someone had to write a book like th is-for the sake of my sanity if nothing else. I say this as someone who was i ntrigued by the loose confluence of themes brought back to prominence in anglophone Continental philosophy circles by Speculative Realism, who was ultimately weaned off his dependence u pon Deleuze by working through these themes, and yet who finds himself thoroughly disappointed by what its initial promise has given way to, largely because of the need to accommodate the undeserved ly prominent precepts of Object-Oriented Philosophy. One of the founding myths of SR is that what distinguishes OOP from the philosophies of Quentin Meillassoux (speculative (/) -u m 0 6 c (/) ;u m )> c (/) ;::

�02 materialism), lain Grant (transcendental materialism/speculative idealism) , and Ray Brassier (speculative nihilism/transcendental � UJ _J <( w °' UJ :J 0 0 w (]._ UJ realism) , is its rejection of materialism .5°5 However, the word ' materialism' is used so differently by these three thinkers that it is useless as a line of demarcation between their ideas and Harman's. The real reason that OOP is the odd man out of the initial SR group is not that it refuses materialism, but rather that it refuses to have any truck with positive epistemology whatsoever. Regardless of the supposed ontological realism in which it dresses itself up, its epistemological anti-realism is pervasive and corrosive to the realist spirit that the other approaches, for the most part , represented . Most tellingly, the rallying cry of Meillassoux's arche-fossil narrative and its demand that we take the literal pronouncements of the sciences seriously is completely rebuffed by OOP, despite its claims to the contrary. In the end, it is speculative in only the most facile way, and realist in only the most impoverished fashion. It has diluted Speculative Realism until nothing is left but Specious Realism, and thereby destroyed any promise that the original grouping might have had . Although the other constituents of SR were all opposed to the correlationist approaches that did indeed begin with Kant, they did not for that matter take this to warrant a return to precritical metaphysics. 5°6 All of them i n different ways champion as essential elements of their work philosophical manoeuvres, devices, and strategies that are d istinctly post­ Kantian. OOP is the exception, insofar as its only debt to Kant is its fetishization of the noumenal -which is precisely the 505. See Harman's narrative of SR in Philosophy in the Making. 77-80. 506. Harman's pre-SR narrative regarding his return to such pre-Kantian themes is explained best in-and indeed as- Guerrilla Metaphysics (75).

aspect of Kant responsible for the genesis of correlationism. 403 It is not Kant's focus on the transcendental conditions of knowledge that makes him the father of correlationism, but his insistence that t hese conditions somehow colour "' -0 m () 0 way that Harman takes this misguided epistemological claim c "' ;;o m )> r and transforms it i nto a sceptical cosmology capable of (jj ;;;: or irreparably distort our g rasp of the real. The elaborate justifying any and all personal prejudices in the face of reasoned debate, scientific or otherwise, is truly amazing to behold. He takes the core intuition driving correlationism-that epistemic access is internally undercut by its own semantic mediation (e.g . , forms of sen s ibility, language games, cultural practices, etc.)-simplifies it by stripping away any need for an account of this mediation, and weaponizes it into a doctrine capable of filling the sceptical niche left in the wake of the continuing collapse of orthodox correlationism. OOP is leaner and meaner than traditional correlationism. It is capable of taking up the traditional role that the loose grouping of ideas referred to by non-philosophers as ' postmodernism' played in leg itimating selective d o u bt ( i .e . , the easy dismissal of conclusions one does not like as ' metaphysical', 'logocentric', 'dogmatic', or even 'proto-fascist'-relayed by OOO's trigger-words such as 'scientistic', 'anthropocentric' and even 'epistemicist' ) . But it also fulfils the more recent role that certain extreme appropriations of Deleuze and Guattari have played in encouraging capricious specu lation (i.e., the 'deterritorialization' of our philosophical culture i n favour of unconstrained, transdisciplinary 'conceptual creation' ) . OOP is willing to give a whole new generation of theorists what they want at the expense of what they need. This makes it the intellectual equivalent of high -sugar. low-nutrition junk food .

404 If you listen closely, you can already hear the clacking of keyboards as a plethora of new O bject-Oriented essays :::; (/) :::; <( w "' (/) ::J 0 u w o._ (/) are written: 'An Object-Oriented Approach to Tattoos as a Means of Cultural Expression', 'Object-Oriented Solutions to U rban Gentrification', 'Angels and Vicarious Causation', 'Are H ipsters I ndependent of their Relations? ', 'Sensual Objects. Quantum Consciousness, and Meister Eckhart: Towards an O bject-Oriented Mysticism'. .. or so I fear. The hard ques­ tion that anyone tempted to add to this hypothetical litany has to ask themselves is this: Do you l i ke 000 because you agree with its basic tenets, or do you like it because it lets you do whatever you want? Are the concepts you are borrowing from it placing explanatory constraints upon your project that lead you to draw more interesting and powerful explanatory connections, or are they simply permitting you to pick and choose wh ichever constraints you want, while at the same time signalling your affiliation with a new and exciting theoretical trend? If your use of 000 has less to do with constraint than permission, and less to do with expla­ nation than affi l iation, then you are repeating a pernicious social dynamic that has been festering at the core of anglo­ phone Conti nental phi losophy and the disciplina ry g roup­ ings that lie intellectually downstream from it for decades.507 507. At this point I expect to be subject to two divergent objections from self­ identified anglophone Continental philosophers: (a) that I am failing to show the solidarity with my Continental brethren that is required if we are to stand up to standard analytic challenges (e.g .. 'obscurantism', ' logical ignorance', 'ex­ cessive historicality', etc.); or ( b) that I have betrayed them by throwing in with, or having always secretly been part of, analytic philosophy, and can thus justly be ignored insofar as I am merely echoing its characteristic prejudices (e.g., 'obsessive clarity', 'superfluous formalism', 'spurious trans-historicality', etc.). There was a point at which I accepted some variant of the standard analysis of the 'Continental/analytic divide', but I find it increasingly counterproductive. as my response to these challenges will attest.

This, then, is the moral of the story: theoretical flexi bil ity is �05 not always a virtue. When it is, it comes from a determinate thesis that matches very specific reasons with very general consequences. When it's not, it comes from a vacuous thesis that mirrors the inclinations of whoever gazes upon it. I n essence, this book is one long obituary for Speculative Realism. The only thing that could possibly bind SR together as a coherent intellectual movement was Meillassoux's intel­ lectual call to arms in the fight against correlationism, but it has become increasingly apparent that if we are at indeed at war with this pervasive epistemological scepticism that metastasised across the humanities in the latter half of the twentieth century, then OOP is our manchurian candidate. Putting it in the most stark terms, if OOP is included within SR, then whatever thematic unity SR might have been able to muster is annulled in advance. Moreover, it is important to I n response to (a) , I think that solidarity has become a weight around the col­ lective necks of Continental philosophers that encourages the very problemat­ ic social dynamic at issue. To break with it, Continental philosophers have to be both able and willing to denounce bad philosophy sold under the same head­ ing as their own. I n response to (b), I certainly draw upon a lot of traditionally 'analytic' figures (e.g . , Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Brandom, etc.) and themes (e.g .. pragmatics, logic, epistemology, semantics, etc.) within in my own work, but I aim to do so in a way that seamlessly switches between them and more traditionally 'Continental' figures (e.g . , Hegel. Husserl, Heidegger, Deleuze, etc.) and themes (e.g. . historical dialectics, methodological immanence, ontologi­ cal difference, metaphysical immanence, etc.). We should all endeavour to do 'post-divide' philosophy to the extent that we should paint our own philosophi­ cal pictures with the broadest conceptual palette the history of our discipline can provide, and not restrict ourselves to more or less arbitrary groupings of figures or themes. Finally, for those worried that my criticisms are somehow one-sided, there are equally pernicious social dynamics in the rival analytic camp, some of which are geographically and linguistically specific, and some of which are not. How­ ever, this is not the place to go into the deep waters of the 'divide debate', as it is very easy to drown one's substantive commitments therein . (/) 'U m (') 0 c (IJ ;u m )> r::: (IJ :;::

�06 recognise that, beyond this, SR presented us with an opportunity to overcome the pernicious i ntel lectual dandyism that :::; (/) _J <>: w 0:: (/) :::J 0 u w ll_ (/) has thrived in the wake of correlationism. The other aspect of its tragicomic tra n sformation into Specious Realism is that this opportunity was not only squandered , but that, through its association with 000, it has become precisely the kind of . vapid philosophical fashion that exemplifies this trend .5oa Still, despite everything. the call to arms has not been silenced , and there are many still keen to respond to it in ear­ nest . But their voices have been drowned out by the inrush of erstwhile correlationists permitted by the ascendancy of 000. Those who enthusiastically leapt into the melee. enthused by the renewal that SR seemed to promise. have found them­ selves at once unwillingly conscripted into a dubious 'move­ ment' promoted by an efficiently-organised PR operation. and continually reprimanded for stepping out of line (a ' neurology death cult' charged with 'continental scientism', 'reductionism', and more besides). We must refuse to march under a banner that has been co-opted as a means to suppress rather than to stimulate thinking; and we must admit: Speculative Realism was dead on arrival. But the time for mourning is over, and it is now time to rally the troops under other banners, in order to return to the vital task at hand . 508. There is a certain decadence to the way Harman draws his historical narratives which is indicative of this. We are treated to an analysis of philo­ sophical trends as fashions. whose principle virtues are aesthetic values such as originality, weirdness. and style. Although such commentaries are not devoid of interest in themselves, the way Harman deploys them often illicitly blurs the line between aesthetic evaluation and philosophical justification.

POSTS C R I PT: S P ECU LAT I V E AUTO PSY RAY B RASS I E R

Any discussion of Speculative Realism needs to begin by avoiding �09 the intermittent and pointless debate over whether Speculative Realism really exists. This question comes five years too late to be meaningful, and generally takes the form of a put -down rather than a bona fide question. Speculative Realism is now the topic of a thriving book series at a major university press, and the sub­ ject of at least one forthcoming monograph. It is embedded in the editorial policy of several philosophy journals. It has become a terme d'art in architecture, archaeology, geography, the visual arts, and even history. It has crossed national boundaries with ease, and is surely the central theme of discussion in the growing continental philosophy blogosphere. Speculative Realism is the topic of several postdoctoral fellowships offered in the United States this year. It has been the subject of semester-long classes at universities as well as graduate theses in Paris. Though there are still tough tests ahead concerning the breadth and durability of Speculative Realism, it has long since passed the 'existence' test to a far greater degree than most of its critics. Graham Harman, 'The Current State of Speculative Realism' in Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism IV (2013), 22. Has Speculative Realism passed the existence test? Graham Harman has certainly served as its indefatigable midwife. No doubt modesty forbade him from mentioning that he is commissioning editor of the 'thriving book series' he cites, and the self-volunteered editor of the new Speculative Real­ ism section of the popular Phi/Papers website.1 His claim about postdoctoral fellowships and semester-long university courses sounds an impressively academic note, flagging the 1. <http://philpapers.org/browse/speculative-realism > . (/) -0 m 0 c r )> _, < m )> c _, 0 -0 (/) -<

�10 i nstitutional recognition that is generally accepted as the seal of intellectual respectability. Yet here a note of caution >­ UJ [L 0 f­ ::0 « w > f­ « _J :::> u w [L UJ is in order, since Ayn Rand 's Objectivism and L. Ron Hub­ bard 's Scientology have also succeeded in securing toeholds in American university programmes. Academic recognition is not compelling by itself unless we are told the names of the fellowships and institutions in question . Moreover, a sceptic might be forgiven for q uerying the reliability of a witness testifying to Speculative Realism's indubitable existence from within the pages of a publication whose official subtitle is 'A Journal of Speculative Real ism'. And if existence is to be measured in terms of biogs, books, and Google hits, then Speculative Realism lags woefully far behind Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster, all of whom have passed Harman's 'existence test' with flying colours. Of course, no one has ever denied the existence of talk about Speculative Realism. To ask whether Speculative Realism deserves to be treated as a cohesive philosophical movement is not to deny the existence of books, articles, and university courses that do just that . The real question is: Is this talk, and the currency of Harman's Speculative Realism brand,2 sufficient 2. Harman makes no bones about his desire to turn Speculative Realism into a brand: The brand is not merely a degenerate practice of brainwashing consumer­ ism. but a universally recognized method of conveying information while cutting through information clutter. Coining specific names for philosophi ­ c a l positions helps orient t h e intellectual public on t h e various available options while also encouraging untested permutations. If the decision were mine alone, not only would the name "speculative realism" be retained, but a logo would be designed for projection on PowerPoint screens, accom­ panied by a few signature bars of smoky dubstep music. It is true that such practices would invite snide commentary about "philosophy reduced to marketing gimmicks". But it would hardly matter. since attention would

to justify the claim that it qualifies as a philosophically significant �11 movement? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to disentangle Harman's claims on behalf of Speculative Real­ ism from the philosophical claims of the various thinkers who are now, for better or worse, associated with this supposed movement. The disparate philosophical tendencies that have been grouped together as Speculative Realism all emerged from the subdiscipline known as 'Continental philosophy'. It is primarily those interested in the Continental tradition-whose numbers are certainly not negligible, since they comprise schol­ ars working in such fields as comparative l iterature, art theory, media and cultural studies. architecture. and other humanities disciplines-whose interest has been piqued by Speculative Realism. The novelty attributed to the latter is taken to reside in the way it supposedly challenges the core tenets of Continental orthodoxy. These tenets are encapsulated in the term 'corre­ lationism', originally coined by Quentin Meillassoux in his book After Finitude.3 The rejection of correlationism is supposed to be the common denominator binding ' Speculative Realists' together, despite their many evident differences. thereby be drawn to the works of speculative realism, and its reputation would stand or fall based on the i nherent quality of these works, of which I am confident'. ('On the Undermining of Objects: Grant. Bruno, and Radical Philosophy' in L. Bryant, G. Harman, and N. Srnicek [eds]. The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism [Melbourne: re-press, 201 1 ] . 21.) While I have the highest regard for the work of Quentin Meillassoux and lain Hamilton Grant, two of the supposed 'founders' of Speculative Realism. I do not share Harman's confidence about the quality of other works currently being marketed under this banner, or about his abilities as a judge of quality. As for 'orienting the intellectual public'. this is a task best left to PR agents and journalists. not philosophers. By taking it upon himself to carry out this task, Harman can be credited with inventing a new genre: philosophy-marketing. 3. Q. Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contin- gency, tr. R. Brassier ( London and New York: Continuum. 2008) . (fJ -u m 0 c r )> --< < m )> c --< 0 -u (fJ -<

412 The question then arising is whether anti-correlationism is indeed a sufficient condition for Speculative Realism. I do >­ (/) Q_ 0 f­ :::0 <l'. w > f­ <l'. __j :::0 u w Q_ (/) not think it can be. This is not to dismiss the salience of Meil lassoux's d iagnosis of correlationism. A favou rite ploy among those who wish to rubbish Meillassoux and Specula­ tive Realism more generally is to deny that there is any such thing as correlationism , or that it has ever been prevalent in Continental philosophy. This is plainly false. It is true that the term has been much abused by those who, following Harman, see anti-correlationism as the defining feature of Speculative Realism. At its most extreme, this allows the accusation of 'correlationism' to become a way of caricaturing rival philo­ sophical positions and short-circuiting debate. I do not believe that correlationism is the u nmitigated ' bad thing' which it seems to be for Harman (and to a lesser extent Meillassoux) , and I have learned the importance of defending the 'good ', epistemic formulation of correlationism from its ' bad ', sceptical version.� Nevertheless, I still think it patently false to deny that correlationism names a characteristic tenet of Continental philosophy. Correlationism i n the 'strong ' version targeted by Meillassoux is simply the denial that it makes sense to postulate things-in-themselves and it is easy to find passages by numerous Continental luminaries (not to mention analytic anti-realists) unequivocally proclaiming the nonsensicality of the Kantian on sich.5 4. My failure t o make t h i s distinction vitiated my discussion of Meillassoux i n Nihif Unbound (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), where I too indulged i n indis­ criminate anti-correlationist rhetoric which I now regret. 5. In 2006, while helping me prepare the final manuscript for Nihil Unbound, Damian Veal compiled a list of such passages in a document entitled 'Cor­ relationism: The Evidence'. It featured quotations from Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, N ietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, as well as from Carnap, Quine,

Does this mean then that a nyone willing to countenance �13 things-in-themselves counts as a Speculative Realist? Clearly among its proponents analytic thinkers such as David Lewis, (fJ 'U m 0 c M ichael Devitt , David Armstrong , Timothy Williamson, Theo­ :':i dore Sider, and others too nu merous to mention. Anti-cor­ m )> c --< 0 'U (fJ -< not. If this were the case, Speculative Realism would count relationism is simply too tenuous a criterion to be counted a sufficient condition for inclusion under the banner of Specu­ lative Realism. Might there be a more positive criterion of inclusion ? It is highly doubtfu l . Consider the philosophical dif­ ferences between Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology, Grant's nee-idealist Naturephilosophy, Meillassoux's speculative mate­ rialism, and my own Sellarsian transcendental naturalism. The first insists that only objects exist . The second defends a dynamic ontology of powers. The third proposes that the Absolute is not what is but what could be. The last claims that thinking is embedded in a nature to which it is logically (though not causally) i rreducible. What is their common featu re ? T h e fact that each stakes o u t a position with regard t o the i n - itself ? But so do the ana lytic philosophers mentioned above. And the differences that prevent these analytic think­ ers from being grouped together as proponents of a single school are surely as significant as those that divide the alleged proponents of Speculative Realism. Harman says there are things-in-themselves but they can only be alluded to, not known. Grant and Meillassoux deny that the in- itself consists of things, but affirm thought's purchase upon the Absolute. I claim that we can know things-in-themselves, but not Goodman. Putnam. McDowell. and Brandom. Those who like to insist that correlationism does not and has never existed would do well to check the h istorical record. r <

�1� through contact with the Absolute, since knowing takes time. What then unites us other than the sociological fact that our >­ (/) a.. 0 f­ :::J <( w > f­ <( _j :::J u w a.. UJ work tends to be classified as part of the Continental tradi­ tion, while that of Lewis, Williamson , Sider et al. is classified as analytic? It is true that the philosophers taken to represent Specu­ lative Realism share an antipathy to a certain philosophical sensibil ity characteristic of post- Heideggerian Continental philosophy: the fetishizing of fi nitude, voiced with a man­ nered portentousness that is the unfortunate consequence of anglophone writers self-consciously aping transliterated Franco-German . But impatience with the rhetoric of finitude and distaste for excessively mannered prose hardly amounts to a common philosophical agenda. Deleuze and Badiou can be credited with rejecting the pathos of finitude long before the advent of Speculative Realism. Their numerous followers share at least this much with Speculative Real ists. In fact, the only unequivocally positive commonality uniting Speculative Realism's founding members is their participation in the 2007 workshop of the same name. Yet when Alberto Toscano and I coorganized this small workshop, founding a new movement was the furthest thing from our minds.6 Whatever affinities connected the participants, they were too i nchoate to be turned into a doctrinal bond , let alone a movement. Perhaps they would have burgeoned in philosophically fruitful ways had they not been prematurely petrified by branding. Be that as it may, it is not insignificant that even if they have not yet disavowed it publicly, none of the other workshop participants 6. I ndeed, Toscano's subsequent conscription into the ranks of Speculative Realism, much against his will, has been a source of periodic annoyance to him.

has i nvested in the label in anyt h i n g l i ke the way that 415 Harman has.7 This is unsurprising when one considers the extent to which the label itself propagates philosophical ambiguity. For even if we grant that Speculative Realists share some sort of com­ mitment to realism-despite being realists about very different things-in what sense is this realism supposed to be 'specula­ tive' ? Of the four alleged ' founders' of Speculative Realism. only Quentin Meillassoux espouses the term 'speculative'. He does so to distinguish his materialism from metaphysical or scientistic doctrines of the same name. As used by Meillas­ soux, the term 'speculative' is to be understood in the Hegelian sense to mean the kind of thinking that is not content with determining its subject-matter extrinsically by appending fixed predicates to it. but i nstead allows subject and predicate to switch roles so that the predicate can become subject and the subject become predicate. This reversibility is of course the hallmark of dialectical thinking, of which Meillassoux is a brilliant practitioner. His 'speculative' materialism renders him far closer to Badiou and Z izek than to the Speculative Realists with whom he continues to be associated . I ndeed , nothing could be less 'speculative' in Meillassoux's sense than Har­ man's Object-Oriented Philosophy. And while we may be more sympathetic to materialism than Harman is. neither Grant nor I endorse 'speculation' in Meillassoux's sense. Stripped of the specific philosophical meaning that it has in Meillassoux's work. 7. lain Hamilton Grant did write a short introduction to Speculative Realism for The Phi/osopher"s Magazine in 2010: see I . H . Grant. 'Speculative Real­ ism', The Philosopher's Magazine 50 (2010), 58-9. However, with typical self­ effacement. Grant did not include his own work in this brief two-page survey. I think it fair to say he no longer has much use for the term; he has certainly not used it to characterize his own work since. Nor for that matter has Meillassoux. (/) "U m 0 c r )> _, < m )> c _, 0 "U (/) -<

416 the term 'speculative' is reduced to its ordinary adjectival sense, meaning 'conjectural, fanciful , unsubstantiated by evidence or >­ en (L 0 f­ :::> < U.J :'.". !;;: _J :::> () U.J (L en fact'. Prefixed to an ill-defined ' realism', it becomes the alibi for a doctrine that wishes to spare itself the trouble of justification. U ltimately, neither commonalities nor shared aversions suffice to clearly demarcate Speculative Realists from other philosophers. Considered as a philosophical movement, Specu­ lative Realism is vitiated by its fatal lack of cohesiveness. Whether we try to define it negatively by what it is against or positively by what it is for, we exclude too little and include too much . Harman justifies his branding of Speculative Realism as a 'universally recognized method of conveying information while cutting through i nformational clutter'.8 The problem i$ that those he has enlisted as the brand's representatives diverge on so many fundamentals that the noise generated by bundling them together far exceeds any possible i nformational content this grouping might have hoped to provide. In the absence of even a minimal positive criterion of doctrinal cohesiveness, all that is left is chatter about something called ' Speculative Realism'-placing it on an ontological par with chatter about the ' M ontauk Project'. It is not difficult to see how Specula­ tive Realism passes Harman's existence test, since this test is predicated on a principle as simple as it is dubious: to be is to be talked about. But there is another more important question underlying the dispute over Speculative Realism's existence. It is the fol­ lowing: Is there anything of real philosophical import at stake in the controversy over what Meillassoux calls 'correlationism'? I think that there is indeed , but unfortunately this is precisely what has been obscured by the concerted attempt to brand 8. See footnote 2 above.

Speculative Realism. The impetus for the original, eponymous 417 workshop was to revive questions about realism, materialism , science, representation, and objectivity, that were dismissed as otiose by each of the main pillars of Continental ortho­ (/) 1J m 0 c r doxy: phenomenology, critical theory, and deconstruction. � The synopsis for that workshop, which I composed with Alberto m )> c _, 0 1J (/) -< Toscano, is worth citing because it illustrates the shortfall between the concerns that animated the original 'Specula­ tive Realism' event. and those of the current Speculative Realism brand: Contemporary 'continental ' philosophy often prides itself on having overcome the age-old metaphysical battles between realism and idealism. Subject-object dualism, whose repudiation has turned into a conditioned reflex of contemporary theory, has supposedly been destroyed by the critique of representation and supplanted by various ways of thinking the fundamental correlation between thought and world. But perhaps this anti-representational (or 'correlationist ' ) consensus-which exceeds philosophy proper a n d thrives i n many domains o f t h e humanities a n d t h e social sciences-hides a deeper and more insidious idealism. Is realism really so 'naive'? And is the widespread dismissal of representation and objectivity the radical. critical stance it so often claims to be? The i nterest in rehabilitating representation and objectiv­ ity remains my own personal preoccupation and was cer tainly not shared by any of the other participants then or now. But the issue of the link between representation and objectivity generates questions about the status of scien­ tific representation, which i n turn lead to the more funda­ mental issue of philosophy's relation to the natural sciences. <

418 This issue is central to Meillassoux's work, whether in the form of his attem pt to provide a speculative proof of the >­ U) 0.. 0 f-­ :::J <( w > f-­ <( __J :::J u w 0.. Cf) contingency of the laws of nature or in his account of the positive ' meaninglessness' of mathematical signs.9 But it is equally fundamental for Grant. whose reactivation of Schell­ ingian Naturphi/osophie requires reasserting 'the eternal and necessary bond between philosophy and physics'10-an inter­ est emphatically reaffirmed by Grant's ongoing research into the philosophical implications of the 'deep-field problem' in cosmology. It is precisely this concern with renegotiating phi­ losophy's relation to the natural sciences that is conspicuously absent from the Harman-sanctioned branding of Speculative Realism. For Harman, such concern smacks of 'scientism'. I ndeed , Harman's vocal disdain for 'scientism' (not to mention 'epistemism' ) confirms the extent to which, notwithstanding the eccentricity of his reading of Heidegger, he remains an orthodox Heideggerian . For Harman, metaphorical allusion trumps scientific i nvestigation and fascination with objects trumps any concern for objectivity. I ndeed . the irony-as Pete Wolfendale's withering dissection of Object-Oriented Ontology demonstrates-is that in Harman's hands, Specu­ lative Realism merely exacerbates the disdain for rationality, whether philosoph ical or scientific. which is among correla­ tionism's more objectionable consequences. It is this misol­ ogy which Meillassoux's After Finitude sought to challenge. Far from challenging it, Harman's Object-Oriented Philosophy 9. Q. Meillassoux, 'Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition: A Speculative Analy­ sis of the Meaningless Sign'. in A. Avenessian and S. Malik (eds) Genealogies of Speculation: Materialism and Subjectivity Since Structuralism ( London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming) . 10. See 1 . H . Grant. 'The " Eternal and Necessary Bond Between Philosophy and Physics " ' in D. Veal (ed . ) , Angelaki 10:1 (2005) , '13-59.

pushes this misology towards even more reckless extremes, 419 such that it ends up being, as Wolfendale puts it, 'correlationism's eccentric uncle'. The denigration of rationality often serves as an alibi for those seeking to evade the obligation to justify their philo­ sophical claims. But this is precisely the obligation that no philosopher can shirk, and the demand for justification will not go away, no matter how stubbornly one tries to ignore it. For how are we supposed to know whether or not there are things in themselves, let alone how they are structured ? While Meillassoux and Grant adduce d ifferent kinds of a priori proof to the effect that we can know that the in-itself exists, even though it does not consist of objects (since both Meillassoux's surchaos and G rant's Naturing nature are unobjectifiable) , Harman remains content with asserting that the world is crammed full of objects in-themselves, whose sensual qualities veil real qualities neither we nor any other object can know. Yet as Wolfendale demonstrates, Harman fails to explain how one might ever know that there is a one-to-one correlation between, on the one hand, the sensual objects which we and other objects apprehend , and on the other, the real objects that underlie these sensual objects. This 'object-oriented ' realism is dogmatic i n Kant's strict sense. Unlike Meillassoux and Grant . Harman does not try to provide a rational rebuttal of Kant's edict that all metaphysical assertions about the noumenal are equally arbitrary. He simply ignores it. More egregiously stil l , Harman cannot answer the sim­ ple question that would seem to be utterly fundamental for any Object-Oriented Ontology: What is an object? Harman's starting point is phenomenology. He generalizes intentional correlation and turns it into the basic relation through which objects interact. Yet he insists that the human-world correlate en lJ m (') c r )> --i < m )> c --i 0 lJ en -<

420 is not the indispensable condition of access to objects. But how then is it possible for us to describe the quiddity of >­ (/) a.. 0 f­ ::> "" w > f­ <l: _j ::> 0 w a.. (/) objects i ndependently of our i ntentional relation to them? Without i ntentional consciousness as source and u nifier of the eidetic (object-disclosing) horizon, we have no reliable way of distinguishing between the eidetic or real features of objects and their accidental or sensual qualities. The upshot is a metaphysics in which we cannot say what anything really is. For if we cannot specify the essential qualities that distin­ guish one real object from another. how can we be sure that the discrete multipl icity of sensual objects does not mask the underlying continuity of a single, indivisible real object ? U ltimately, Harman's account of 'real objects' fuses epistemic i neffability with ontological i nscrutability: since real objects can never be represented , only 'alluded ' to, it is impossible to say what they really are. The result, as Wolfendale shows, is a metaphysics where we can never know what we are ' really' talking about, nor explain why our allusions should succeed where our representations fai l . Graham Harman should feel honoured b y what he himself recognizes as Wolfendale's 'encyclopedic diligence', even if he may be discomfited by its consequences for his own work. What Wolfendale provides us with is a compelling diagnosis of what is wrong not just with Object-Oriented Ontology, but the Speculative Realism brand to which Harman has lent his impri­ matur. Wolfendale's painstaking dissection of the confusions, fallacies, and non sequiturs unleashed by this new species of speculative dogmatism is as i nstructive as it is devastating. And i ndeed , there is an appropriately dialectical paradox in the realisation that Wolfendale's autopsy for Harman's Specula­ tive Realism brand embodies everything that the 'Speculative Realism' workshop seemed to promise: the breakout from a

terminally sclerotic Continental tradition epitomized by a motley 421 of what Lakatos called 'degenerating research programmes'.11 There is no little irony in the fact that this promise, briefly Ul "U m kindled in April 2007, was prematurely snuffed out as a result () of the attempt to render Speculative Realism palatable to an � audience whose sensibilities were already shaped by Conti­ m )> c --i 0 "U Ul -< nental philosophy-an audience that equates representation with repression, objectivity with oppression, and naturalism with scientism. But Wolfendale has reignited the breakout. His matchless philosophical intelligence cuts across traditions in search of the necessary resources for the construction of new conceptual possibilities, rearticulating the questions that the 'Speculative Realism' workshop had initially promised to take up. It is thus only fitting that Wolfendale's 'speculative autopsy' should also mark the birth of his own genui nely unprecedented philosophical voice. 11. I . Lakatos. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philo- sophical Papers Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). c r <

I N DEX O F NAM ES �23 z 0 m x 0 ,, z )> ;;: m Cf! A Adorno, T. 350 Althusser, L. 347 Anselm 229 ANTHEM group 380 Apel, K.O. ' Meaning constitution and justifi­ cation of validity' 345 Aristophanes 335 The Clouds 335 Armstrong, D. M . 413 Universals 235 Ash'arite school 98 Austrian school 212 B Bachelard, G. 343 Badiou, A. 163, 171, 215, 222, 223, 223-224, 225, 227, 228, 229. 246, 249, 259-265, 270, 271-272, 273, 275, 315, 317, 319, 323, 341 , 353-357, 359, 360, 361 , 374, 414, 415 and ontological liberalism 259-265 · Being and Appearance' 224 Being and Event 215, 223. 224, 261 . 262, 264 Deleuze: The Clamor of Being 353 ' Kant's Subtractive Ontology' 262 'Language, Thought. Poetry' 271 Logics of Worlds 224. 259 'The Question of Being Today' 223 Barad, K. 380 Meeting the Universe Halfway 380 Barwise, J. and J. Etchemendy, Language Proof and Logic 237 Bataille. G. 228 Baumgarten, A. Metaphysics 216 Bay, M. 390 Bennett, J. 210, 380 Vibrant Matter 380, 381-382 Bergson, H. 162, 228 Russell on 162 Bhaskar. R. 211. 283 Blackburn, S. Spreading the Ward 309 Black, M. 128-9 Models and Metaphors 129 Bogost. I . 4 , 211, 212, 259, 266, 283, 334 , 388 Alien Phenomenology 266, 283, 334 Unit Operations 259 Bourriaud, N. 385 Relational Aesthetics 385 Brandom. R. 30, 92. 115-116, 119. 124 . 1 5 6 , 1 58, 231, 237, 256, 258, 274, 306, 310, 329, 330, 331 , 365, 366, 405, 413 Articulating Reasons 331 Between Saying and Doing 156. 158, 306, 365

en w � < z u.. 0 x w 0 z Making It Explicit 92, 115-116, 124 , 231 , 237, 256, 258, 274, 366 Reason in Philosophy 30 Tales of the Mighty Dead 30, 48, 158, 310, 330 theory of anaphoric chains 124 Brassier. R. xvi. 5, 259, 359, 402 'Concepts and Objects' 187-188, 280, 380 Nihil Unbound 412 Brentano. F. 209 Brooks, C. 368 Bryant. L. x. 4. 211. 388 The Democracy of Objects 271 c Canguilhem, G. 343 Cantor, G. set-theoretical paradoxes 246-247, 267 Caputo, J.D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida 342 Carnap. R. 232, 232-235, 243, 244 . 250, 251. 252, 308, 3 1 4 , 341 , 412 ' Empiricism. Semantics, and Ontology' 232 'The Elimination of Metaphysics' 250 Caygill, H. A Kant Dictionary 216. 217 Ceusters. W. 'Biomedical Ontologies' 233 Chihara. C. Ontology and the Vicious Circle Principle 239, 246 Churchland, Paul 377 Churchland. Patricia 377 Cohen. J. 210 and I. Stewart. The Collapse of Chaos 210. 277. 382 Creswell. M.J. 331 Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) 356 D Danto. A. The Abuse of Beauty 386 Darwin. C. 65 Davidson. D. 127, 128. 129. 310-312. 333 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' 311 'The Individuation of Events' 311 'The Method of Truth in Metaphysics' 311 Delanda, M. 1 63, 170, 171-176, 178-180, 181, 210, 211. 281. 282, 283, 319, 323 A New Philosophy of Society 175-176, 282 Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy 282 Deleuze. G. 30, 36, 1 63, 170, 171-176, 178-180, 181. 193, 210, 228-229, 236, 276, 281-283, 296, 319, 323, 353-356, 359, 360, 361, 374, 401, 403, 405, 414 and F. Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus 210. 282 What is Philosophy? 282. 353 Difference and Repetition 178, 229, 283 Empiricism and Subjecitivity 175-176 'I Feel I am a Pure Metaphysician' 283 plane of immanence 282 Dennett. D. 377 Derrida, J. 222-223, 227, 315, 317, 329, 333, 347. 349, 351 Acts of Religion 342 Limited Inc 351 'Ousia and Gramme' 222 Descartes. R. 98, 99, 229. 304 , 330, 367 Devitt, M. 413 Duchamp, M . 386, 393

Dummett, M . The Logical Basis of Metaphysics 302 Dunham, J and Grant, l . H . . Idealism 322 E Eklund, M . 'Carnap and Ontological Pluralism' 233 Erickson, G.W. · and Fossa, J.A .. Dictionary of Paradoxes 246 Etchemendy, J. and J. Barwise, Language Proof and Logic 237 Evans, G. 92, 119 F Fichte, J.G. 321-2, 360, 412 The Science of Knowledge 322 Fine, K. 'Relatively Unrestricted Quantification' 247 'The Question of Ontology' 313, 235 Fossa, J.A. and Erickson, G.W. . Dictionary of Paradoxes 246 Foucault. M 347-8 ' Michel Foucault' 348 'What is Enlightenment?' 348 Frege, G. 89, 115, 116-117, 118, 119, 125, 230, 231, 234 , 236, 239, 240-242, 329, 331 , 342, 343 Foundations of Arithmetic 242 G Gabriel, M. 212, 249, 259, 267, 270 on fields of sense 273 'The Meaning of " Existence" and the Contingency of Sense' 249 Transcendental Ontology 213, 267 Garcia, T. 212-214, 259, 270 'Crossing Ways of Thinking' 214, 270 Form and Object 213 on 000 269-270 Gasset. Ortega y . 89, 122, 128, 142, 161 Harman on 143 on qualities 143 Geach, P. ' Identity' 257 Gentzen 329, 331 Girard, J.-Y. 'Locus Solum' 240 Goodman, N. 413 Grant, l . H . 5, 359, 360, 402, 413, 415, 418, 419 and J. Dunham, Idealism 322 'Does Nature Say What-It-ls? ' 202 'Speculative Realism' 415 'The " Eternal and Necessary Bond " ' 418 Greenberg, C. 368 Guattari, F. 353, 356 and G. Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus 210, 282 What is Philosophy? 282, 353 H Habermas, J. 227 Harman, G. passim 'A Fresh Look at Zuhandenheit' 66 'Art Without Relations' 385 Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political 380 Circus Philosophicus 176, 177, 372 Guerrilla Metaphysics 7, 29, 73, 83, 87, 88-90, 92, 97, 100, 102-103, 122, 127, 129, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142-143, 147, 148-149, 150, 151. 152, 167-168, 195-196, 211, 290, 330, 333, 335, 369, 374, 384, 402 425 z 0 m x 0 " z )> ;;: m Ul

426 (/) LU ::;; <! z u._ 0 x LU 0 z 'I am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed' 74 , 104-106, 184-186, 286-288 'On the U ndermining of Objects' 411 'On Vicarious Causation' 87, 97, 98, 103 Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making 6, 39, 66-67, 68, 73, 201 , 225, 391, 402 ' Physical Nature and the Paradox of Qualities' 124 Prince of Networks 30, 73, 88, 98, 171, 173, 177, 187, 335, 362-364 , 370-371 ' Response to Garcia' 211 'Space, Time, and Essence: An Object-Oriented Approach' 197-199 The Quadruple Object 72, 73, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91 . 125, 135, 139, 140, 147, 149, 151, 158, 189, 191, 211-212, 286, 287, 288, 290 'The Revenge of the Surface' 368 'The Revival of Metaphysics in Continental Philosophy' 66, 70 'The Road to Objects' 126, 165 Tool-Being 14, 29, 33, 39, 41, 43, 45, 48, 49, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 62-64, 66, 70, 73, 78, 82, 83, 87, 88, 91, 103, 142, 153, 170, 199, 288-289, 290, 335, 361 Towards Speculative Realism 39, 66, 70, 124 , 154, 174 , 175, 193, 198, 211. 283 'Tristan Garcia and the Thing-in­ itself' 270 Weird Realism 137, 206, 368, 369 Hegel, G.W.F. 30, 65, 158, 218, 228, 229, 296, 302, 307, 310, 314, 329, 330, 331, 342, 343-344, 345, 352, 405, 412, 415 Phenomenology of Spirit 158, 296, 330, 343 Science of Logic 302, 343 Heidegger, M. ix, 30, 32, 39, 40-49, 50-52, 56, 57-58, 60, 65, 66, 79-83, 87, 95, 110, 111, 143, 147, 157, 163-164, 168, 170, 175, 193, 198, 210, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220-222, 223, 225, 227, 228, 229, 233, 236, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 262, 264-265, 269, 284 , 289, 303, 305, 314 , 315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 321-322, 336, 341 , 342, 344 , 345, 349, 368, 375, 392, 405, 412, 418 and Nazism 344-345 Badiou on 264 Basic Problems of Phenomenology 41, 81 , 221 , 316 Being and Time 80, 81 , 221, 268, 349 Being and Truth 345 Contributions to Philosophy 81, 219, 222 Fundamental Concepts at Metaphysics 43, 44, 217, 217-219, 219, 219-221 , 221-223 Harman on 31, 40 Introduction to Metaphysics 33, 41, 219, 220, 221 , 250, 252 Metaphysical Foundations of Logic 41, 221 'Only a God Can Save Us' 342 'On the Essence of Truth' 222, 345 'On the Origin of the Work of Art' 81 Poetry, Language, Thought 255 pragmatics in 321-322 'The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking' 221 'The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitu­ tion of Metaphysics' 219 'The Thing' 81 'What is Metaphysics?' 250 Hirsch, E. 235 Hubbard, L. Ron 410

Hume, D. 98-99, 10'1 , 155, 157, 160-161. 175, 305-307, 308, 315 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 305 Husserl, E. 18, 79, 8'1 , 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 105, 118, 120, 136-137, 1'15, 1'17, 191, 209, 211. 218-219, 220, 221, 222, 22'1, 225, 226, 227, 228, 232, 233, 235, 259, 262, 273, 275, 279, 28'1, 289, 299, 31'1, 315, 316, 3'11, 3'12, 3'13, 3'1'1 , 3'17, 377, '105, '112 Ideas 86, 3'13 Logical Investigations 1'15, 3'13 reception in Continental and analytic traditions 3'12-3'13 thing-in-itself 31'1 Kiesel, T. The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time 80 Klossowski, P. 3'17 K. Meehan and Shaw, l.G.R., ' Force-Full' 379 Kneale, W. Development of Logic 239, 2'16 Kripke, S. 79, 88-9'1, 119-121 , 123, 278, 311 , 331 causal theory of reference 278 Harman on 90, 123 Naming and Necessity 89, 92 Ireland, A. 'Ontology for Ontology's Sake' 397 L J Jackson, F. ' Epiphenomena! Qualia' 1'11 Jacquette, D. Ontology 236 Johnston, A. 2'16 K Kant. I. 6, 65, 98, 155, 189-190, 203, 20'1 , 216-218, 226, 227, ' 229-230, 2'19, 252, 262, 28'1 , 306-307, 308, 320, 3'13, 3'1'1 , 3'16, 3'17, 3'18, 361, 368, 371 , 378, '103, '112, '119 Critique of Pure Reason 217, 229, 306, 32'1 , 368 fideism in 3'11-3'12 Harman on 16'1-165 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science 306 objects in 260-261 on metaphysics 306-307 Opus Posthumum 306 Lacan, J. 262, 3'11, 3'17, 353 Ladyman, J. 10'1, 163, 170, 171, 180-18'1, 186, 188, 19'1, 235, 273, 31'1 , 378 and D. Ross, Every Thing Must Go 73, 181-18'1 , 19'1, 273, 31'1, 378 Lakatos, I. '121 Methodology of Scientific Re­ search Programmes '121 Proofs and Refutations 366 Lambert, K. 'The Philosophical Foundations of Free Logic' 237 Lance, M . 'Quantification, Substitution, and Conceptual Content' 237 Laruelle, F. 228, 317, 3'11 From Decision to Heresy 228 Principles of Non-Philosophy 228 Latour, B. 169, 186-187, 259, 276-280, 335, 357, 361, 380 and G. Harman, P. Erdeyl, The Prince and the Wolf 380 Brassier on 280 on circulating reference 277-278 427 z 0 m x 0 .,, z )> s:: m (/)

428 (/) w ::;: <{ z u.. 0 x w Cl z Pandora's Hope 278 The Pasteurizotion of France 210 We Hove Never Been Modern 279 'Why has Critique Run out of Steam?' 357 Leibniz, G.W. 36, 65, 76, 79, 88, 91. 98, 99, 150, 191, 192-194, 223, 224 , 229, 304 , 305, 371 . 392 debate with Clark 191, 193-194 Harman on 91 Levinas, E . 148 Lewis, D. 109, 235, 311-314, 331, 413, 414 Counterfoctuols 312 On the Plurality of Worlds 235, 312 Linebo, 0. ' Plurals, Predicates, and Paradox' 240 Lingis, A. 211 Lovecraft, H . P. 368 Harman's interpretation of 137 Lowe. E.J. 235 Lyotard, J.-F. 349 M Mackie, J. L. 309 Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong 309 Malebranche, N. 98 Mallarme, s. 271 Mao Tse-Tung 353 Marcuse, H. 347 Marx, K. 347, 350 McDowell, J. 92, 119, 309, 413 Mind, Value. and Reality 309 McLuhan, M . 368 Meillassoux, Q. 5, 36. 39, 67, 141. 199, 200-201, 203, 222, 224-226, 227, 228, 236, 246, 302, 315, 317, 341-342, 359-360, 363, 401. 402, 405, 411-412, 413, 415-416, 418, 419 After Finitude 6, 141, 199, 200, 203, 225, 227, 302, 342, 359, 411 . 418 and hyperchaos, surchaos 314, 341 'Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition' 418 speculation in 317 Meinong. A. 115-119. 120-121. 126. 209, 211 . 289, 295 The Theory of Objects 209 Merleau-Ponty, M. 377 Metzinger. T. 377 Millikan, R. 377 Montague. R. 311, 331 Moore. G.E. 308, 314 Morton, T. 4 . 211, 378-379, 388, 395 Realist Magic 378-379. 395 Murphy, S. The Art Kettle 386 Mussell. S. 'Object-Oriented Marxism? ' 379 N Negarestani, R. 351 Newton, I. 341 Nietzsche. F. 36, 228. 321. 345, 347. 350, 412 0 Olive Oyl 295-296 p Parmenides 301-302 Plato 65, 302 Pope, A. 341 Popeye 126-127, 268, 294 , 295 Price, H . 233, 235 ·Metaphysics After Carnap' 233 Putnam, H. 413

Q Quine, W.V.O. 215. 216. 233-237, 23'1, 235, 236, 2'10-2'15, 2'18, 253, 25'1, 263-26'1 , 265, 283, 29'1, 295, 296, 308-309, 311, 312, 319, 320, 323, 329, '105, '112 critique of Carnap 233-23'1 'On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma' 311 'On What There Is' 215, 23'1, 2'11 The Roots of Reference 235, 2'13 R Rand, A. '110 Restall, G. Introduction to Substructural Logics 331 Rorty, R. 377 Rosenberg, J. 377 Ross, D. 10'1, 163, 170, 171, 180-18'1 , 186, 188, 19'1, 235, 273, 31'1, 378 and J. Ladyman, Every Thing Must Go 73, 181-18'1 . 19'1. 273, 31'1, 378 Russell. B. 119, 120, 162. 230-231, 23'1, 236, 239, 2'10, 2'11, 2'12, 2'16, 2'17, 253. 267, 308, 31'1 . 329, 331, 3'12, 3'13 Our Knowledge of the External World 162 theory of descriptions 253 'On Propositions' 231 Russell's paradox 2'10, 2'16 s Sacilotto, D. 9'1 Sartre, J.-P. 353 Saussure, F. de 329, 3'13, 350 Schelling F.W.J. 202, 307, 327, 360, '112 and l.H. Grant '118 Schlick, M. ' Meaning and Verification' 232 Schopenhauer, A. '112 Sellars, W. 300-301 , 307, '113 Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind 377 myth of the given 377 · Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man' 300-301 Serres, M. 210 Shakespeare, S. Derrida and Theology 3'12 Shaviro. S. 170 'The Actual Volcano' 163, 170 'The U niverse of Things' 170 Shaw, l.G.R. and K. Meehan, 'Force-Full' 379 Sider, T. '113, '11'1 Simmons, P. ' Meaning and Language' 118 Simondon, G. 172 Singleton, B. mother of 268 Socrates 300-303, 335-336 Spinoza. B. 36, 65, 22'1, 229, 282. 30'1 , 305, 367 Stewart. I. 210 Does God Play Dice? 17'1 and J. Cohen, The Collapse of Chaos 210, 277, 382 T Tarski, A. 311, 329 Tomberlin, J. 'Objectual or Substitutional' 237 Toscano, A. 172, '11'1 v Van Fraassen, B. 31'1 The Scientific Image 31'1 Veal, D. '112 Vienna Circle 231, 232 429 z 0 m x 0 ,, z l> ;: m (/)

�30 UJ w � <( z u. 0 x w 0 z w Wallace, D. F. · E Unibus Pluram' 369 Warhol, A. 386 Whitehead, A.N. 36, 98, 1Ll7, 153. 163. 169-170, 175, 193, 199, 239, 363, 364. 366-368. 374 . 392 Process and Reality 366-368 Wiggins, D. 235 William of Occam 209 Williamson. T. "113. Ll1LI Wilson, M . Wandering Significance 133 Wittgenstein, L. 132, 227. 231-232, 308, 3Ll1, 405 Tractatus Logico­ Phi/osophicus 227, 231 Wolfe, J. Heidegger and Theology 3Ll2 Wolfendale, P. 'Ariadne's Thread', 179, 282 ' Essay on Transcendental Realism' 308, 322 'The Ends of Beauty' 386 'The Greatest Mistake' 343 'The Necessity of Contingency' 225 The Question of Being 315 x Xenophon Memorable Thoughts of Socrates 336 z Zalamea. F. Synthetic Philosophy of Contem­ porary Mathematics 323. 365 Z izek, s. 2Ll6. 327. 3Ll1 . 362, 364 , Ll15 Zubiri, X. 18, 79, 83. 88. 91, 1Ll2

431 I N DEX O F S U BJ ECTS z 0 m x 0 ,, (/) c CD '-­ m 0 --< (/) A abstract concreteness 389 abstraction and concreteness, in critical discourse 350-352 accidents 16, 18, 20, 24 , 138-139 accidental vs essential features 85-87, 92-93, 136-137, 142 and eidos, in Harman 87, 420 acquaintance ( Russell) 124 Actor Network Theory (ANT) 169, 210, 276, 381 . 383 actual and virtual 171-180, 281-282 actuality 64 , 72, 135, 1 53, 225, 312 and possibility 44, 46, 54-55, 64 , 153, 225 vacuous 1 53-154, 159, 293 adumbration ( Husserl) 84-85, 138, 146. 191 aesthetics 25. 35-36, 299. 270, 384 Harman's 102 allure (category) 20, 24-25, 88, 100-102, 189-191, 206-207, 384 allusion 86, 88, 206, 259, 266, 267, 269, 271, 287, 291, 292, 293, 317, 318, 319, 418, 420 allusiveness and elusiveness 291 allusive ontology 271 and insincerity 286-287 ancestrality 199-201, 205-206 anthropocentrism 43, 201 , 279, 374-375 and anthropomorphism, in Latour 279 Apeiron 95, 176, 205, 286 arche-fossil ( Meillassoux) 199-201. 396, 402 arche-writing ( Derrida) 223 argument 29. 362-368 metaphysical 30-34 Aristotle 65, 93, 133, 177, 217, 219, 220, 223, 300. 302, 303, 304 , 319, 328, 331 , 391, 396 art object -oriented 383-389, 393 as-structure 40, 45, 46, 49, 60, 63, 147 awareness 51 , 59 axiomatics 263 B Being 42. 81, 83, 265, 295, 316, 319. 321 , 324, 354-355 and beings, in Heidegger 41 and mathematics. in Badiou 261-262 and Nothing 252-253 and ontological liberalism 258 and predicates, in ontological liberalism 256 and substance (Heidegger) 220 and thought 302, 324 and thought, i n German Idealism 307 and thought ( Parmenides) 301

432 rn >-­ (.) w -, <D ::J rn u._ 0 x w 0 z as inconsistent multiplicity ( Ba­ diou) 223-224 forgetting of (Heidegger) 110, 220, 305, 345 implicitness of 263 in Heidegger 81 , 218-219 is Nothing ( Heidegger) 251 question of ( Heidegger) ix, 32, 220-221, 303 transcendent knowledge of, in Kant 217-218 biogs ix, x, xi, 409 branding xiv, 401 c catastrophe theory 180 category theory 224 , 227, 323 in Badiou's phenomenology 260, 273 causation 13-14, 20-24, 60, 63, 6772, 71, 100-105, 159-160, 168, 176, 180, 190, 198, 205-206, 29'1 , 325 and representation, conflation of 100 category of 20-21 , 190 causal capacities 1'1-16, 20, 49, 52-55, 59, 6LI , 68-71, 104, 153, 159-161 causal capacities vs normative functions Ll6-Ll7, 56, 66 causal interaction -1LI , 43-45, 60-63, 68-71, 100, 167-170 Hume vs Kant on 155-157, 305-307 indirect 101 metaphysical problem of 103, 324 vicarious 21 , 23, 97, 101-102, 199 circulating reference ( Latour) 277-278, 279 circumspection (Heidegger) 51 coherence 366-368, 370-371 , 373-376 Collapse (j o urnal) 6, 36, 87, 225, 283, 359 confrontation (category) 20, 2LI, 189-190, 293-29'1 construction (as opposed to critique) 355-357, 367-370, 376 contiguity (category) 25, 168 Continental philosophy, Continental tradition xv, 220-221, 226, 227, 236, 317, 339-340, 343, 348-349, 349, 352-353, 356, 359, 375-376, 389, 404-'105, L111, L112, L11LI, L117, '121-422 Cantor's paradox in 246 continuity and discreteness 178-179 contraction (category) 25 contradiction 60-6LI , 76, 207, 292, 33'1, 363-366 correlationism 6, 35, 200-201, 202, 207, 310, 331-332, 339-341, 344 , 361, LI03, LI05, 412, 413, Ll16-Ll17 Heidegger's 317 metaphysical 315, 315-317 orthodox 3'19-350 retreat from, in Badlou 262 strong vs weak 203-204, 226-227, 262, 346 counterfactual 93 counting 2'12-243, 256-258, 272-27'1 count-as-one ( Badiou) 260 criticism 361-362, 368-370, 384 art 350, 370, 384 cultural 368-369, 370 literary 348, 350, 368 philosophical 370 science 379 critique 335, 347-349, 392 and criticism 349-352 critical reflexes 351 critical shibboleths 352 degeneration of 350-352, 362, 376 rejection of, in Harman 361-362 of metaphysics 317-326 vs construction 355-357 Cynicism, Cynics 29, 351 , 362, 368

D Dasein 33, 40, 42. 43, 44. 48, 82, 164 , 219, 221 , 223, 252 deconstruction 222, 227, 314, 317, 417 dependence 50-53. 54, 55-58, 60-63, 168-170 diagram 19, 291 . 293-294, 299 Die Hard 390 differance 223, 227, 314, 315, 341 differential relations 171-174, 178-180 discreteness and continuity 178 domination 346 and universalism 346 duplicity (category) 25, 144, 287, 292-293 dynamic systems theory 173-175, 180, 325 dynamism and stasis 54 E eidetic variation ( Husserl) 85, 86, 87, 88, 137, 138, 139, 191 eidos (category) 18, 79, 84 , 85, 86, 87, 88, 92, 95, 137, 147, 189, 190, 287, 293 and accident. in Harman 87 argument from 79, 84-88, 92, 137 Elements ( Harman) 148-149, 167, 290 emanation (category) 21 emergentism 277-278, 281 Empiricism 157-158, 306 empty set 224 , 227, 240, 252, 253, 262, 268 epistemic relativism 329 epistemology 65, 75, 78, 90, 184-186, 320, 321, 361 implicit. in Harman 117 transcendental 344 equipment (Heidegger) 52-55 Harman on 45 Ereignis (Heidegger) 43, 223, 227, 314 , 315, 316, 321 . 341 error possibility of 76 essence 18, 54 , 61 , 70, 71, 78, 86-88 and excess. in Harman 71 and meaning, in Kripke 94, 120. 189-190 argument from 88-95 category of 18-21 general, in Husserl 86 individual, of real objects 92 Event ( Badiou) 259, 356 excess 14, 69, 70, 149, 150 argument from 39, 66-73, 74, 152 epistemic 24 qualitative vs quantitative 70, 72 execution 41. 49, 53, 55, 58, 61, 64 , 66, 153, 180 and causation 13 argument from 39, 49-66, 72 as function, in Harman 64 existence 111. 119, 209-210, 215, 228, 235-236, 245, 252, 255, 294-296, 313 in Badiou 224 , 262 in Carnap 232-233, 308-309 in Frege 230-231 in Frege and Russell 236-238 in Kant 230 in Husserl 218-219, 226-227 l n Russell 230-231 in Quine 240-242, 245, 308-309 of Speculative Realism 416 explanation 263-264, 272, 276-283 in OOP 109-111, 289-290 explicitness 291 , 334-335, 336, 365, 371 and implicitness 33, 288 Harman on 363 F factiality ( Meillassoux) 225 feeling 90, 122 433 z 0 m x 0 .,, (/) c "' '- m 0 -i (/)

434 [/) f­ (_) w --, CD ::J [/) LL 0 x w 0 z and metaphor, in Harman 129 in art 387 fictions, fictional objects 126, 212, 242-243, 281 , 294-296, 394 finitude 70, 414 in Kant 346 first philosophy 219-220, 303 aesthetics as 299 metaphysics as 109, 326 fissions ( Harman) 18, 293 fiat ontology 211, 282 formal ontology ( Husserl) 218-219 fourfold 12, 17-21, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84 , 88, 149, 150, 189, 205, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 293, 373, 391 freedom 344 function 14, 46-47, 59-66, 101, 152, 170, 180, 199 causal capacities vs normative functions 46-47, 56, 66 in Heidegger 164 , 168 functional dependence 57-59, 63, 170 functional relations 13, 57-59, 89, 164, 170 functional role 49, 56, 64, 157 mathematical 166, 237, 239, 240, 246-247 fusions ( Harman) 24-25, 293 G gastronomic mysticism 162, 299, 391 Gelassenheit (Heidegger) 222, 227, 316 generality 44, 87, 147-152, 188-189, 281 , 301-302 and tool-analysis 46-49 H haecceity, haecceitism 122-127, 135, 147-152, 161, 292-293, 329, 332 historical narrative 30-31 , 40, 97-99, 372 historicism 345, 349, 353 holism 58, 60-63, 95, 170, 176, 179-180, 193, 198-199, 205, 267 humility epistemic 165, 342, 344 , 354 , 375, 376 ontological 14, 165, 354, 357, 374, 375, 376 radical 401 hyperbolic reading 3, 339-340, 391-397 Hyperchaos, surchaos ( Meillassoux) 314 , 341 idealism 361, 417 absolute 307, 310 German 307, 314 , 344 , 360 in Husserl 84 transcendental 307, 308, 310 identity 116-117, 123, 170-171, 178, 182, 185, 189-190, 224 , 312, 324 argument from 73-78, 86, 117, 329 criterion of 224 , 231 , 257 necessity of 76 identity of indiscernibles principle of ( Leibniz) 76-78 idle talk 349 academic 349-350 imagination 139 immediacy 89-90, 123-124, 136-141 , 1 4 5 , 149, 157, 161 implicitness 46-47, 51 , 61, 317, 335 and explicitness 288 in definition 262-263 in quantification 244-245, 250-251 , 258 of Being 254-255, 263-264 independence 14-15, 23-24, 71, 163-164, argument from 99-102, 186 individuality 35, 36, 56, 57, 62, 64, 147, 149-150, 1 52, 171-177, 180-182 . . 187-188, 239, 242, 281, 324

individualism 58-60, 63-64, 95 individuation 59, 87, 88, 91. 95, 150, 152, 171-173, 205 ineffability 55, 420 inexhaustibility 67 in-itself 204 , 347 insincerity 272, 286, 335, 336 intellectual dandyism 406 intellectual intuition 346 intentionality 31, 51, 164-167, 210, 218 interdisciplinarity 377 introspective metaphysics 104-105, 205-206, 378 invisibility 49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61. 66 and totality, in Harman 58 irony 294, 334, 336, 369 isolation 15, 71. 180 J junctions (categories) 21, 189, 293 K knowledge 74, 100-101, 138, 183, 203-204, 227, 262, 315-316, 320, 329-330, 341-344, 346-347, 361, 403 in Harman 24 , 67-72, 73, 166-167, 374-375 metaphysical, definition of 217-218, 322 metaphysical, in Harman 20'1 -207, 290, L Latour litanies 3, 212, 267-268 logic 302; 325, 331-332, 343 constrains metaphysics 324 free 295 logical empiricism (Carnap) 232-233 logical expressivism (Brandom) 331 logical positivism 232 logical pragmatism 322 M Marxism 343, 381 kitsch 351 materialism 286, 351 . 381 , '102, 415, 417 speculative 203, 401-'102, '115 mathematics 225, 228, 263, 272, 323, 360, 363-365 in Deleuze and Badiou 223, 261 . 353-35'1 meaning 127-134, 200-201, 2'11, 280, 311, 331-332, 361, 36'1-365 as verifiability (Vienna Circle) 232 of names 90-9'1 vs experience of meaning 329 mereology 15, 56-58, 72-73, 74, 83, 1 51-152, 282, 325 meta-ontology 223, 261 , 272, 317, 355 metaphor 29, 127-134, 269-270, 274-275, 333, 335, 368, 390 and analogy 134 , 33'1 and representation 273-274 Harman on 127-129, 130 in ontological liberalism 267-271, 286 in Gabriel 267 metaphysica genera/is 216, 218-219, 226, 229, 236 metaphysical teleology 65 metaphysica specialis 216, 218, 218-219, 225. 226, 229, 236, 273, 275 metaphysics 35, 65, 300-303, 303-305, 318-321 . 325-6, 356, 389-390 and metaphorics 269-270 and ontology in Continental tradition 228-229 and ontology, in Heidegger 220-222 and phenomenology, in Harman 65, 69, 86 and science 325, 326 and semantics 231-232 435 z 0 m x 0 Tl en c aJ '­ m 0 _, en

�36 Cf) f0 w --, aJ '.:) Cf) LL 0 x w 0 z as first philosophy 109, 326 Badiou on 223 critique of 308, 315, 317, 323, 326 end of 222, 228 implicit vs explicit 323 impossiblity of (Hume) 305-306 in analytic tradition 231-236 in Derrida 222-223 in Meillassoux 22"1-226, 360 Kant on 306-307 problem of (Heidegger) 32 vs ontology, in Husserl 218-219 methodology 66, 100, 10"1, 110, 111, 20"1-205, 276-277, 321-322, 355, 361, 362, 380, 390 misology "118 modality 5"1-55, 65, 93, 135, 235, 305, 306, 308 modal mysterianism 65-66, 152-162 model theory 237, 263-26"1, 311, 313 multiplicity and singularity, in Harman 150, 150-151 and unity 161 in Badiou 223-22"1. 261 , 262-263 inconsistent ( Badiou) 223, 3"11 mysticism 3"17, 396 N naivete 361 and sincerity 335 names, naming 88-9"1 , 115-127 Kripke's theory of 88-9"1 , 123 descriptivist approaches to 119, 230, 2"12 naturalism 306, 311-313, "113, "121 Harman on 103 Quine's 2"13, 265, 296, 312 nature 323, "119 Nazism Heidegger's 3"1"1 negative animism 396 negative theology 3"12 networks 169, 187-188, 281 New Materialism 380, 381 , 383 noetic challenge 209, 215, 218, 22"1, 2"15, 2"18, 259, 270, 271, 273, 275, 276 nominal acts ( Husserl) 89, 12"1 nominalism 30"1 , 309 noncontradiction 225, 226-228 normativity "17, 56, 65, 12"1, 306, 35"1, 366, 375 the Nothing (Heidegger) 250-252, 261-262, 265 noumenon, noumena xvi, 6, 202, 20"1, 31"1-315, 3"11. 3"16-3"17, 361 , 396, "102-"103 and phenomena 199-207, 218-219, 226-227 0 objects xiv, 3, <I, 11. 12, 1"1-16, 68, 115, 1 56-159, 163-16"1, 188, 201 , 215, 218, 226, 239, 2"12, 2"18-2"19, 258, 267-269, 28"1-297, 297, 379, 38"1 , "119, "120, and beings 25"1-256, 320, 32"1 and qualities 17, 150, 1 56-162 in Badiou 223-22"1, 259-262, 273 real 13, 17-21, 23-2"1, 118, 120-122, 189, 192, 202, 205, 31"1 , 3"11, "120 sensual 15, 17-21, 23-2"1, 118, 120-123, 126-127, 1"18-1"19, 189, 202, 205 Occam's Razor 2"13 Occasionalism 98-99 ontography 25, 291 ontological argument 229-230 ontological commitment 110, 209, 21"1-215, 215, 2"13, 272-273, 380 in Quine 236-2"15 ontological conservatism 209, 210, 25"1 and anti-reductionism 283-28"1 Badiou and 259 in Quine 2"13, 2"15, 25"1-255

ontological difference 254-255, 265-266, 282 ontological egalitarianism 14, 215, 256, 270, 281, 381 in Deleuze and Badiou 354 ontological liberalism 211-214, 24 5, 247, 254-255, 258, 266-267, 268-269, 271 . 283-284, 284-297, 285, 319 Badiou's role in emergence of 259-265 ontology 42 allusive 271 . 272 and metaphysics in Continental tradition 228-229 in Heidegger 220-222 and phenomenology, in Husserl 219 defined by Kant 218 ftat (Delanda) 282-283 formal vs regional ( Husserl) 218-219, 226 fundamental vs. regional (Heidegger) 219-220, 221-222, 299 history of the term in Continental tradition 216, 216-231 in analytic tradition 229-235 in Badiou 223-224 in Harman 42 in Kant 217-218 in Meillassoux 224-226 in natural and informational sci­ ences 272-273 poetic 264 , 265 subtractive ( Badiou) 261-263, 271 onto-theology 83, 111, 220, 225-227, 319 ordinary language philosophy 343 p panpsychism 35-36, 377, 383 parsimony 263, 283, part/whole (see mereology) patriarchy 352 persistence 14, 51 . 54, 56, 198 perspective 84, 138, 139, 146 phenomena (see noumena) phenomenological description 30-31 . 51 . 55, 104 phenomenology 51 . 52, 55, 61. 65, 69, 84 , 105, 136, 261, 284, 321. 342, 343, 352, 377, 378, 419 and metaphysics 125 and metaphysics, in Harman 65, 69, 86, 266 and ontology, in Husserl 219 Husserlian method 88 in Badiou 224 phenomenological reduction (Husserl) 226-227 philosophy 397 and science, Harman on 102 philosophy-marketing 411 physics 418 placebo affect 387 platonism 309 Frege's 231 pluralism 345-349, 352, 357 ontological (Carnap) 232-234 Polemic Harman on 7 politics and philosophy, in twentieth century 344-348 OOP and 379-383 possibility 82, 225, 230 and actuality (see actuality) and modality (see modality) possible worlds 166, 263, 312-313 postmodernism 227, 349, 353, 357, 403 poststructuralism 349, 353, 357 potentiality 159 Harman on 154-155 pragmatics 316, 320-322, 351 in Heidegger 321-322 pragmatism, American 342 �37 z 0 m x 0 (/) c OJ '­ m 0 __, (/)

�38 (j"J f0 w -, CD :::0 (j"J LL 0 x w 0 z predicates, predication 8'1 , 11'1, 119, 166, 237-239, 238-239, 256-257, higher-order 230, 236, 239-2'11. 2'13 hypostasization of 292 sorta! 131. 256-257, 272-273, 258, 262, 27'1, 28'1 quasi-sorta! 273-27'1 non-sorta! 131 pseudo-sortal 258, 28'1 systems of 272-273. 278 presence '16, 61. 62. 163 Heidegger's critique of '10 presence-at-hand '10. '11. '15, '16, '17, 62, 68, 80, 153, 289 pre-theoretical ( Heidegger) 80, 219-220 psychoanalysis 3'13, 3'17 psychologism 117. 125 anti-psychologism 377 purport representational 113-11'1 referential vs predicative 11'1. 117. 120-122, 1'15 Q qualia 1'10-1'11. 1'13, 1'15-1'16, 158, 161 qualities 12. 17, 2'1-25. 80-83, 88-95. 120-121, 127, 1'17-152, 152-162, 166, 188, 225, 287-288, 292-293, '119 accidental and eidetic 85-87 and objects (see objects) bundles of 121. 183, 286, 36'1 essential and inessential 88, 138, '120 in Harman 287 primary and secondary 1'11-1'12, 360 sensual 17-21. 88-95, 136. 138-139, 1'12-1'17. 189, 191-192. '120 sensible 135-1'17, 157-158. 160 real 17-21. 88-95. 137-139, 160-161 quantification 237-238, 2'10-2'12, 295 objectual interpretation 237, 2'1'1 restricted and unrestricted 2'1'1-2'15, 250-251 unrestricted 2'16-250, 256-257 Badiou and 260-261 R radiations (categories) 21 , 1 50 radical alterity 3'17 rationalism 209. 30'1-305 rationality '118, '119 readiness-to-hand '10, '11. '15, '16, '17. 289 reality, real 29'1-297, 308-310, 313, 316. 318. 320, 322-32'1 and appearance 219, 222-22'1, 227, 275. 315. 316. 318, 321 and the sciences 10'1, 32'1-326 objects (see objects) qualities (see qualities) realism 35, 36, '115, '119 deflationary 308-313 in Husserl 8'1 ontic structural 180-18'1 transcendental 322 reason in philosophy, Harman on 30 reductionism 210, 275-276, 28'1 , '106 reference '19, 59, 89, 90. 110, 287, 288 and predication 292 causal theory of ( Kripke) 278 de dicto vs de re 118. 119, 121 Frege's theory of 116 indirect. in Harman 92 in Heidegger ( Verweis), Harman's reading of 56 in Russell 119 Meinong vs Frege on 116 Meinong's theory of 115 sense and (Frege) 89. 116 relations 13-15. 21. 2'1, 56-58. • 62-6'1 , 69, 99, 101, 153-155. 163-199, 235. 293-29'1. 32'1 as predicates 166-167 Harman on 16'1-165

intentional 15, 24, 125-127, 164 , 169, 186, 192, 209, 218 relation and non-relation 191-194 and substance 63, 100 representation 75, 77, 144-146, 278, 292, 297, 417 and causation, conflation of 100 anti-representationalism 114-115 Harman's implicit theory of 117, 120, 122, 144-145, 294 predicative and referential dimensions of 113-114, 118, 121-122, 145, 292-293 rhetoric 267, 267-268, 328, 350, 362, 369, 371 in ontological liberalism 267 Harman on 363-364 rhetorical string theory 395 rigid designators (Kripke) 88, 90, 92, 93, 119, 124 romanticism 334 German 344 semantic 332, 368 s scepticism 160, 316, 331 , 334, 360 epistemological 207, 339, 368 metaphysical 299, 315 semantic, in Harman 329 transcendental 344 sceptico-critical hegemony 352, 356, 359, 361, 375 scholasticism 216, 229, 303-304, 391, 395-396 science 46, 137, 146, 183-185, 199-202, 206, 233, 234 , 243, 245, 254, 259, 272, 277, 278, 283, 306, 308, 311-312, 323, 325, 363-365, 370, 382, 394-395, 402 and metaphysics 325-326 and philosophy, in Speculative Realism 360-361, 418 and philosophy, Harman on 100-104, cognitive 360, 377 empirical research and philosophy 377-378 Harman on 103, 183-184 , 377-379 philosophy of, French 343 physics, Morton on 378-379 scientism 406, 418, 420 semantic grafting 133, 274-275 semantics 320, 321 , 330, 331 , 343 and axiomatics 263 and metaphysics 231-232 inferentialism 132 model-theoretic 311 possible world 166, 312 semantic speculation 311 sense and reference ( Frege) 89, 115-116 reflexivity of 289-290 Sense-Certainty ( Hegel) 296, 329, 330, 352 sensible (see qualities) sensuality, sensual 11-12, 13, 20, 2324 , 60, 71, 80, 86, 94, 113-134 , 138, 141, 145, 152, 154, 189, 192, 199, 202, 205, 206, 290, 292, 318, 320, 330, 332. 396 and intellectual, in Husserl 85, 137 and real 11-12, 88. 152, 285, 287, 292 qualities (see qualities) objects (see objects) set theory 227, 248-250, 261 , 263, 355 sincerity 21 , 23, 100, 121, 286, 287-288, 294 , 364 , 369 and naivete 335 metaphysics of 369-370 singularity 161 and multiplicity, in Harman 150-151 in Deleuze/Delanda (attractors) 174 sophism 335 sortals (see predicates) 439 z 0 m x 0 "T1 (fJ c OJ '­ m 0 � (fJ

(/) f­ u w -, (lJ ::J (/) LL 0 x w 0 z Sosein ( Meinong) 115, 11B, 119, 120, 121. 230 space 1B, 20, 1BB-199. 202. 2Ll9, 252, 2B7. 293, 32LI. 325, 3Ll6, 37B Speculations (journal) xi, xiii. 2Ll9. LI09, Ll10 Speculative Realism ix, x, 3, 5, 6. 359-360, LI01, LI01-LI06, LI02, LI05, LI09-Ll21 as brand xiv, Ll10, Ll16, Ll1B, Ll20 workshop 359, L11LI. Ll17. Ll21 stasis 170 and dynamism 5Li structuralism 3"13. 3Ll7, 3"19, 351, 352 stuff 3BB style 30, 332, 350, 357, 36B-373, 390 subsistence ( Meinong) 115-120. 126, 19LI, 209, 253 substance LI. Ll1, LIB. 61 , 6LI , 71, 9B. 1 53, 163, 23LI, 269-270, 2B9 and Being ( Heidegger) 220 and ground 22LI and relation (see relations) and style 369-373 and unity 222-22LI, 260-261 as presence (Heidegger) 163, 222-223 execution as, in Harman 6LI Spinozan 2B2 Supplementation argument from 102-105 symbolism 350, 35LI T theory facades (Wilson) 133 theory (category) 20, BB. 190 theory of types. type theory ( Russell) 239-2LIO, 2LIB, 25B. 260-261, 272 thisness (see haecceity) time 1B-20, Ll5, 55, BB. 111. 1BO, 1BB-199, 201-206. 2Ll9, 252, 262-271, 291 , 293, 32LI, 3Ll6, tool-analysis 39, LIO, Ll5, Ll7, LIB. Ll9. 57, 61, 62, 66, 73, 7B, 79, 2B8-289 totality Ll3, B2-B3, 182, 2Ll6, 2Ll8-2Ll9, 320 and equality, in ontological liberal­ ism 255-56 and invisibility, in Harman 56-61 Transformers: Dark of the Moon 390 u undermining and overmining, in Harman 2B6 understanding in Heidegger Ll3-Ll6, unity 17, 6"1 . 80-B1 , B3. 122. 129-132, 152 and substance (see substance) universalism 3LILl-3Ll9, 361 and domination 3Ll6 universals 130, 152, 235, 2Ll5, 282 unrestricted quantification (see quantification) v vicarious causation 12, 21. 23-25, 97. 100, 102-103, 199. 376 vitalism 382-3B3 vividness 371-373. 390 w the Whole 2Ll6, 262, 267, 2B2-283, 295 withdrawal 12, 1LI, 21. 39, 60, 67, 69, 71- 7LI, 78-79, 83, 122. 161, 190, in Derrida 223 withdrawn numbers 395 world Ll3. LILI, 57, 59 and earth, in Heidegger B2 in Heidegger Ll2 worlds ( Badiou and Meillassoux) 22LI, 225-226, 260-261, 265, 273, 275