- Philosophy, Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler, Pluralism, Feyerabend, Gilles Deleuze, and 53 moreOntology, Bruno Latour, Object Oriented Ontology, Althusser, Graham Harman, Hubert Dreyfus, Object-Oriented Ontology, Eddington, Epistemology, Continental Philosophy, Ernst Mach, Two Tables Argument, Models of Pluralism(s) and Multiculturalism(s), Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Individuation, Sean Kelly, Harman, Speculative Realism, Louis Althusser, Speculative Realism (Philosophy), Graham Harman, Ian Bogost, Timothy Morton, Paul K. Feyerabend, Bruno Latour on Religion, Karen Barad, Sadie Plant, Michel Serres, Physics Epistemology Science-Fiction, Synthetic Non-Magical Speculative Realism, Religious Pluralism, Compositionism (as defined by Bruno Latour), Sociology of Science, New Materialism, Ray Brassier, New Realism, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Badiou, Levi Bryant, John Protevi, Philosophy of Thomas Kuhn, Eugene Thacker, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Rudolf Carnap, François Laruelle, OOO, Quentin Meillassoux, Paul Feyerabend, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, China Miéville, James Hillman, Non-Standard Philosophy, and Non-Philosophyedit
- Philosophe australien dont les recherches portent sur les pluralismes épistémologiques et ontologiques contemporains.... morePhilosophe australien dont les recherches portent sur les pluralismes épistémologiques et ontologiques contemporains. Agrégé d'anglais, je vis et enseigne en France. Blog: Agent Swarm (http://terenceblake.wordpress.com/). Philosophes préférés: Deleuze et Feyerabend. Auteurs de SF préférés: Alastair Reynolds, Gene Wolfe, Neal Stephenson and China Miéville.edit
In 1980 after spending six months in Paris attending Gilles Deleuze's and Michel Foucault's seminars, and after interviewing Michel Serres and Jean-François Lyotard, I returned to Sydney and gave a paper synthesising my impressions. It... more
In 1980 after spending six months in Paris attending Gilles Deleuze's and Michel Foucault's seminars, and after interviewing Michel Serres and Jean-François Lyotard, I returned to Sydney and gave a paper synthesising my impressions. It was published in THE FOREIGN BODIES PAPERS, 1981. The title of the published version was not mine, but was inserted in place of my original title, which was PLURALIST FLEXI-ONTOLOGY. This title conveys my impression that these thinkers were, each in their own way, were working in the domain of ontology to elaborate not a new ontology, but a pluralist « flexi »-ontology. There was some discussion after it was given, but it was mostly disappointing. I reproduce here my appended response, but I have blanked out the names of those I respond to, as they have no doubt evolved a little since then (as have I). Note: I now prefer to talk of a pluralist meta-ontology.
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This article was originally published in TENSION Issue 9: « Murmur of the Soul », May 1986. The impetus to finally put it into blog-readable form was provided by an episode of the podcast ACID HORIZON devoted to « Inner Experience: From... more
This article was originally published in TENSION Issue 9: « Murmur of the Soul », May 1986. The impetus to finally put it into blog-readable form was provided by an episode of the podcast ACID HORIZON devoted to « Inner Experience: From James Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology towards a Liberation Psychology ». This is a very interesting episode introducing the still insufficiently known and read post-Jungian analyst and cultural theorist James Hillman and exploring his Archetypal Psychology, including some of the many resonances and intersections with Deleuze and Guattari’s schizo-analysis.
I began reading James Hillman in 1976, just before discovering Deleuze and Guattari’s ANTIOEDIPUS, and have been reading him ever since. I attended Deleuze’s cinema seminars from 1981 to 1985 and was constantly struck by the parallels between Deleuze and Hillman around a common ontology of the image. Hillman gave me a new insight into Jung and prepared me for my encounter with Deleuze’s thought.
Unfortunately in the early1980s no one gave a damn about such connections. However, I managed to publish two articles on the convergences: NOTHING TO DECLARE and IMAGE IS THE
MEASURE.
I began reading James Hillman in 1976, just before discovering Deleuze and Guattari’s ANTIOEDIPUS, and have been reading him ever since. I attended Deleuze’s cinema seminars from 1981 to 1985 and was constantly struck by the parallels between Deleuze and Hillman around a common ontology of the image. Hillman gave me a new insight into Jung and prepared me for my encounter with Deleuze’s thought.
Unfortunately in the early1980s no one gave a damn about such connections. However, I managed to publish two articles on the convergences: NOTHING TO DECLARE and IMAGE IS THE
MEASURE.
Research Interests:
Mounting and descending arcs of the circle of the proposition, sense is the principle of variance.
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Deleuze as a philosopher is interested in the new and in the creation of concepts. In LOGIC OF SENSE Deleuze proposes both a new concept of logic and a new concept of sense. This new logic is a non-standard logic that suspends or... more
Deleuze as a philosopher is interested in the new and in the creation of concepts. In LOGIC OF SENSE Deleuze proposes both a new concept of logic and a new concept of sense. This new logic is a non-standard logic that suspends or relativises some or perhaps all of the rules of classical logic. The concept of sense, in turn, is developed outside of the familiar philosophical and logical schemas. Both logic and concept are paradox-based: sense is a paradoxical non-existent entity, requiring a paradoxical logic. As we begin to get clear on the sense of Deleuze’s logic we come to see its incompleteness. He has created the concepts necessary to a logic of sense, but necessarily in executing this task he has not created the concepts adequate to explicating the logic of that logic. This further step is to be taken up by Deleuze’s readers in their own task of creative explicitation.
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Deleuze's method in LOGIC OF SENSE is both deconstructive and transformative of the concepts it analyses.
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This dialogue gives essential conceptual context for reading Deleuze's LOGIC OF SENSE. The central theme is Deleuze's contribution to Fundamental Ontology: pluralism, meta-ontology and Wild Being, and the elaboration of an "ontology of... more
This dialogue gives essential conceptual context for reading Deleuze's LOGIC OF SENSE. The central theme is Deleuze's contribution to Fundamental Ontology: pluralism, meta-ontology and Wild Being, and the elaboration of an "ontology of sense". Frege emerges as an important influence on LOGIC OF SENSE, in particular his discussion of sense and reference, concept and object, as does Bertrand Russell with his ramified hierarchy of types. Reworking the concepts drawn from these and many other sources, Deleuze frees them from the limiting constraints imposed by standard extensional logic, and constructs an intensional logic that affirms paradox rather than trying to eliminate it.
Research Interests:
Christopher Nolan diagnoses a death drive impulsing our civilisation and its tenacious push towards governance by hyper-surveillance and towards climate catastrophe. He finds this death drive within our technocratic hubris intending to «... more
Christopher Nolan diagnoses a death drive impulsing our civilisation and its tenacious push towards governance by hyper-surveillance and towards climate catastrophe. He finds this death drive within our technocratic hubris intending to « fix » everything by means of social engineering and now by geo-engineering. The hyperbolic image of this techno-fix is the Algorithm. Nolan's proposed solution is to reverse the algorithmic reversal of desire into drive, to resist the full calculability of desire, to operate on a faith outside techno-nihilism. He invites us to de-algorithmise desire and to tenetise the future.
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This text is a first attempt to synthesise an epistemology of incommensurabilities and an ontology of images. I had been working on epistemological and psychological pluralism, and on the ties between Paul Feyerabend's epistemology... more
This text is a first attempt to synthesise an epistemology of incommensurabilities and an ontology of images. I had been working on epistemological and psychological pluralism, and on the ties between Paul Feyerabend's epistemology (incommensurabilities) and James Hillman's archetypal psychology for over five years, before moving to Paris in 1981.
I had felt the need to pursue both an ontology and an aesthetics of pluralism and was lucky to be able to attend Gilles Deleuze's seminars on cinema (pluralist ontology of images) and Foucault (pluralist epistemology and ontology) and Jean-François Lyotard's seminar on the sublime (epistemology and aesthetics of incommensurabilities).
I had felt the need to pursue both an ontology and an aesthetics of pluralism and was lucky to be able to attend Gilles Deleuze's seminars on cinema (pluralist ontology of images) and Foucault (pluralist epistemology and ontology) and Jean-François Lyotard's seminar on the sublime (epistemology and aesthetics of incommensurabilities).
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Published in 1981, after a six month stay in Paris, this was my most "Baudrillardian" text to date. Originally titled "On Some Alternatives to the Code in the Age of Hyperreality, the Hermit and the City Dweller", it was published in Art... more
Published in 1981, after a six month stay in Paris, this was my most "Baudrillardian" text to date. Originally titled "On Some Alternatives to the Code in the Age of Hyperreality, the Hermit and the City Dweller", it was published in Art & Text #2, Winter issue, 1981. The text was written in collaboration with John Young. I wrote the theoretical parts, and John Young provided the examples, in particular Titus-Carmel.
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IN 1980 after spending 6 months in Paris attending Deleuze and Foucault's seminars, and interviewing Serres and Lyotard, I returned to Sydney and gave a paper synthesising my impressions. It was published in THE FOREIGN BODIES PAPERS,... more
IN 1980 after spending 6 months in Paris attending Deleuze and Foucault's seminars, and interviewing Serres and Lyotard, I returned to Sydney and gave a paper synthesising my impressions. It was published in THE FOREIGN BODIES PAPERS, 1981. The title of the published version was not mine, but was inserted in place of my original title, which was PLURALIST FLEXI-ONTOLOGY. This title conveys my impression that these thinkers were, each in their own way, were working in the domain of ontology to elaborate not a new ontology, but a pluralist meta-ontology. There was some discussion after, but it was mostly disappointing. I reproduce here my appended response, but I have blanked out the names of those I respond to, as they have no doubt evolved a little since then (as have I).
Research Interests:
I begin by “deconstructing” the title and explaining that Feyerabend does not really use the word “ontology”, though he does call his position sometimes (and the “sometimes” is important) ontological realism. I explain that he talks about... more
I begin by “deconstructing” the title and explaining that Feyerabend does not really use the word “ontology”, though he does call his position sometimes (and the “sometimes” is important) ontological realism. I explain that he talks about his position as indifferently a “general methodology” or a “general cosmology”, and that he seems to be be hostile to the very enterprise of ontology, conceived of as “school philosophy”. I then go on to say that there is perhaps a concept of a different type of ontology, that I call a “diachronic ontology” that perhaps he would have accepted,and that is very different from ontology as ordinarily thought, which I claim to be synchronic ontology (having no room for the dialogue with Being, but just supposing that Being is already and always there without our contribution). I discuss Althusser and Graham Harman as exemplifying synchronic ontology, giving a reading of Harman’s recent book THE THIRD TABLE. I then discuss Feyerabend’s ideas as showing a...
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Graham Harman judges science and common sense in terms of the crude philosophical criteria of another age and finds them lacking in knowledge of reality. He posits a shadowy "withdrawn" realm of real objects in order to explain... more
Graham Harman judges science and common sense in terms of the crude philosophical criteria of another age and finds them lacking in knowledge of reality. He posits a shadowy "withdrawn" realm of real objects in order to explain the discrepancies between his naive abstract model of knowledge as access and the concrete reality of the sciences. Works such as THE QUADRUPLE OBJECT, THE THIRD TABLE and BELLS AND WHISTLES, like the whole of his philosophy, are the record of Harman noticing the discrepancies, but refusing to revise the model. His solution is a dead-end, the timid, nostalgic, and fundamentally misleading propounding of an antiquated epistemology under the cover of a "new" ontology
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In this article I take a critical look at the origins and sources of Bruno Latour's pluralism as it is expressed in his book AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE, and compare it to other similar projects (Wittgenstein, Feyerabend,... more
In this article I take a critical look at the origins and sources of Bruno Latour's pluralism as it is expressed in his book AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE, and compare it to other similar projects (Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, Badiou). I consider the accusations of reductionism and of relativism, and demonstrate that Latour's «empirical metaphysics» is not an ontological reductionism but a pluralist ontology recognising the existence of a plurality of entities and of types of entities. Nor is it an epistemological relativism but an ontological pluralism affirming the existence of a plurality of types of existence. These two strands, pluralist ontology and ontological pluralism, mutually reinforce each other to produce at least the outlines of a robust pluralist realism
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I. Introduction : sortir du badiousisme Mehdi Belhaj Kacem a publie une longue lettre ouverte a Tristan Garcia ou il decrit une “nouvelle conjecture” qui est en train d’emerger avec la generation montante des jeunes philosophes, qui... more
I. Introduction : sortir du badiousisme Mehdi Belhaj Kacem a publie une longue lettre ouverte a Tristan Garcia ou il decrit une “nouvelle conjecture” qui est en train d’emerger avec la generation montante des jeunes philosophes, qui commencent a se liberer de l’espace conceptuel defini par l’hegemonie intellectuelle exercee par Alain Badiou, pendant la derniere decennie, comme Maitre Penseur inconteste. Selon MBK une nouvelle configuration conceptuelle est en train de se former, et sa “lettre...
This paper attempts to evaluate the AIME project immanently, from the perspective of a participant, in terms of five criteria: digitality, diplomacy, religiosity, testability, and democracy. A sixth criterion runs through the other five:... more
This paper attempts to evaluate the AIME project immanently, from the perspective of a participant, in terms of five criteria: digitality, diplomacy, religiosity, testability, and democracy. A sixth criterion runs through the other five: pluralism. I distinguish between AIME as project, as process, and as party line.
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Transcription of Conversation on Deleuze's Logic of Sense by Terence Blake and Kent Palmer Audio https://www.academia.edu/video/kA6M3j Copyright Terence Blake and Kent Palmer 2021 File: BPconvo2fixed_finally_edited02 (raw transcript)... more
Transcription of Conversation on Deleuze's Logic of Sense by Terence Blake and Kent Palmer
Audio https://www.academia.edu/video/kA6M3j
Copyright Terence Blake and Kent Palmer 2021
File: BPconvo2fixed_finally_edited02 (raw transcript)
File: Dialogue_LOS_2 >> Conversation_LOS_02TBlakeEdit01 (edited)
File: BPconvo2fixed_finally_edited02_otter.ai
File: DeleuzeLoS20210318conversation02_finalized.mp3
File: PalmerBlakeDialogue_DeleuzeLOS02_20210318kdp01a.docx
Deleuze Logic of Sense Series 01 Conversation LOS02 between Terence Blake and Kent Palmer on 20210321 on Continental Philosophy Discord Server [https://discord.gg/ykc5SQ4] apropos of reading of text on Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective discord server [https://discord.gg/76NrF5T]
Archive Site: https://independent.academia.edu/KentPalmer http://kdp.me @kentpalmer
See also https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/ @TPBlake
See also SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/quarantine_collective
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClD25HlzCthOQJsv4v2QCnA
Audio Identifier: US-KDP-000000000001-005654-700905665
Audio https://www.academia.edu/video/kA6M3j
Copyright Terence Blake and Kent Palmer 2021
File: BPconvo2fixed_finally_edited02 (raw transcript)
File: Dialogue_LOS_2 >> Conversation_LOS_02TBlakeEdit01 (edited)
File: BPconvo2fixed_finally_edited02_otter.ai
File: DeleuzeLoS20210318conversation02_finalized.mp3
File: PalmerBlakeDialogue_DeleuzeLOS02_20210318kdp01a.docx
Deleuze Logic of Sense Series 01 Conversation LOS02 between Terence Blake and Kent Palmer on 20210321 on Continental Philosophy Discord Server [https://discord.gg/ykc5SQ4] apropos of reading of text on Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective discord server [https://discord.gg/76NrF5T]
Archive Site: https://independent.academia.edu/KentPalmer http://kdp.me @kentpalmer
See also https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/ @TPBlake
See also SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/quarantine_collective
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClD25HlzCthOQJsv4v2QCnA
Audio Identifier: US-KDP-000000000001-005654-700905665
Research Interests:
Dialogue on Logic of Sense Series 1: A Love of Paradox, Wild Being and Strange Loops Abstract: This dialogue gives essential conceptual context for reading Deleuze's LOGIC OF SENSE. The central theme is Deleuze's contribution to... more
Dialogue on Logic of Sense Series 1: A Love of Paradox, Wild Being and Strange Loops
Abstract: This dialogue gives essential conceptual context for reading Deleuze's LOGIC OF SENSE. The central theme is Deleuze's contribution to Fundamental Ontology: pluralism, meta-ontology and Wild Being, and the elaboration of an "ontology of sense". Frege emerges as an important influence on LOGIC OF SENSE, in particular his discussion of sense and reference, concept and object, as does Bertrand Russell with his ramified hierarchy of types. Reworking the concepts drawn from these and many other sources, Deleuze frees them from the limiting constraints imposed by standard extensional logic, and constructs an intensional logic that affirms paradox rather than trying to eliminate it.
Transcribed Sat, 3/13/2021 8:14PM • 1:27:39
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, logic, philosophy, ontology, sense, idea, concept, Merleau-Ponty, talks, Lewis Carroll, developed, language, Derrida, wild, Plato, point, Continental Philosophy, thought, identity, difference, Zizek
SPEAKERS
Terence Blake, Kent Palmer
Copyright Terence Blake and Kent Palmer 2021
File: DeleuzeLoS20210311conversation01_edited (raw transcript)
File: Dialogue_LOS_1 (edited)
File: DeleuzeLoS20210311conversation01_finalized.mp3
File: PalmerBlakeDialogue_DeleuzeLOS01_20210313kdp01a.docx
Deleuze Logic of Sense Series 01 Conversation LOS01 between Terence Blake and Kent Palmer on 20210311 on Continental Philosophy Discord Server [https://discord.gg/ykc5SQ4] apropos of reading of text on Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective discord server [https://discord.gg/76NrF5T]
Archive Site: https://independent.academia.edu/KentPalmer http://kdp.me @kentpalmer
See also https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/ @TPBlake
See also SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/quarantine_collective
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClD25HlzCthOQJsv4v2QCnA
Audio Identifier: US-KDP-000000000001-092532-044280750
Abstract: This dialogue gives essential conceptual context for reading Deleuze's LOGIC OF SENSE. The central theme is Deleuze's contribution to Fundamental Ontology: pluralism, meta-ontology and Wild Being, and the elaboration of an "ontology of sense". Frege emerges as an important influence on LOGIC OF SENSE, in particular his discussion of sense and reference, concept and object, as does Bertrand Russell with his ramified hierarchy of types. Reworking the concepts drawn from these and many other sources, Deleuze frees them from the limiting constraints imposed by standard extensional logic, and constructs an intensional logic that affirms paradox rather than trying to eliminate it.
Transcribed Sat, 3/13/2021 8:14PM • 1:27:39
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, logic, philosophy, ontology, sense, idea, concept, Merleau-Ponty, talks, Lewis Carroll, developed, language, Derrida, wild, Plato, point, Continental Philosophy, thought, identity, difference, Zizek
SPEAKERS
Terence Blake, Kent Palmer
Copyright Terence Blake and Kent Palmer 2021
File: DeleuzeLoS20210311conversation01_edited (raw transcript)
File: Dialogue_LOS_1 (edited)
File: DeleuzeLoS20210311conversation01_finalized.mp3
File: PalmerBlakeDialogue_DeleuzeLOS01_20210313kdp01a.docx
Deleuze Logic of Sense Series 01 Conversation LOS01 between Terence Blake and Kent Palmer on 20210311 on Continental Philosophy Discord Server [https://discord.gg/ykc5SQ4] apropos of reading of text on Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Collective discord server [https://discord.gg/76NrF5T]
Archive Site: https://independent.academia.edu/KentPalmer http://kdp.me @kentpalmer
See also https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/ @TPBlake
See also SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/quarantine_collective
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClD25HlzCthOQJsv4v2QCnA
Audio Identifier: US-KDP-000000000001-092532-044280750
Research Interests:
DUNE est l'histoire d'un voyage initiatique qui tourne mal. Au lieu d'épanouir son individualité et de devenir le héros qui a dépassé son propre égoisme et qui agit en vue de la libération de tous, Paul Atréides devient l'Empereur Divin,... more
DUNE est l'histoire d'un voyage initiatique qui tourne mal. Au lieu d'épanouir son individualité et de devenir le héros qui a dépassé son propre égoisme et qui agit en vue de la libération de tous, Paul Atréides devient l'Empereur Divin, maître politique et spirituel de l'univers connu. En tant que roman postmoderne, DUNE nous présente une vision du temps qui a beaucoup en commun avec celle de Gilles Deleuze, un temps non-déterministe à bifurcations multiples, elles-mêmes en devenir. Cette image du temps est opposé à une autre image, d'un temps spatialisé, déterminé et prévisible. Tous les personnages dans DUNE, tout comme les personnages conceptuels chez Deleuze, sont définis par leur rapport au temps. Finalement, DUNE exemplifie les 4 critères que Deleuze pose pour le roman de science fiction moderne: estrangement, cognition autre, futurité, apocalypse.
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An attempt at an impartial review of a very partial book.
Research Interests:
This text includes a presentation of TETRALOGOS, the new (2019) book by François Laruelle, followed by an examination of his formula for a « general science fiction » and a proposal to make this formula more generic. Abstract (1) some... more
This text includes a presentation of TETRALOGOS, the new (2019) book by François Laruelle, followed by an examination of his formula for a « general science fiction » and a proposal to make this formula more generic.
Abstract
(1) some general considerations regarding the amplitude and inventiveness of Laruelle’s research program. (2) static presentation of the book, its structure, content, and themes. (3) dynamic presentation of the book, its movements and forces, its conceptual drama, and its relationship with some defining features of the genre of science fiction. In (4) we examine the three criteria for a general or non-standard science fiction that Laruelle proposes, amounting to a formula for the re-foundation of the genre of science fiction. (5) We test his hypotheses by examining some potentially falsifying examples of SF. (6) contains a proposition for an extended formula for a general or non-standard SF. In (7) we conclude with the concept of an inventive farewell to the philosophers who have been our educators.
The key word for this new book by Laruelle is « amplitude », which describes the aim of the book to englobe the whole of human experience, its sites and its stages, freed from the confines of philosophy, reaching from the Earth to the Universe, from the Cavern to the Stars, and from Birth to Messianity. To attain this goal he must make philosophy far more inventive than it has become. These two words also describe the underlying values of science fiction.
Abstract
(1) some general considerations regarding the amplitude and inventiveness of Laruelle’s research program. (2) static presentation of the book, its structure, content, and themes. (3) dynamic presentation of the book, its movements and forces, its conceptual drama, and its relationship with some defining features of the genre of science fiction. In (4) we examine the three criteria for a general or non-standard science fiction that Laruelle proposes, amounting to a formula for the re-foundation of the genre of science fiction. (5) We test his hypotheses by examining some potentially falsifying examples of SF. (6) contains a proposition for an extended formula for a general or non-standard SF. In (7) we conclude with the concept of an inventive farewell to the philosophers who have been our educators.
The key word for this new book by Laruelle is « amplitude », which describes the aim of the book to englobe the whole of human experience, its sites and its stages, freed from the confines of philosophy, reaching from the Earth to the Universe, from the Cavern to the Stars, and from Birth to Messianity. To attain this goal he must make philosophy far more inventive than it has become. These two words also describe the underlying values of science fiction.
Research Interests:
Ce texte comporte une présentation de TETRALOGOS, le nouveau (2019) livre de François Laruelle, suivi par un examen de sa formule pour une « science-fiction générale » et une proposition pour rendre cette formule plus générique.... more
Ce texte comporte une présentation de TETRALOGOS, le nouveau (2019) livre de François Laruelle, suivi par un examen de sa formule pour une « science-fiction générale » et une proposition pour rendre cette formule plus générique.
Abstract:
(1) considérations générales concernant l’amplitude et l’inventivité du programme de recherche laruelléen. (2) présentation statique du livre, de sa structure et de ses thèmes. (3) présentation dynamique du livre, de ses mouvements, de son drame conceptuel, et de son rapport avec quelques traits définitoires du genre de la science-fiction. (4) les trois critères que Laruelle propose en vue d’une formule permettant la refondation du genre de la science-fiction (5) la mise à l’épreuve de ses hypothèses par l’examen de quelques exemples potentiellement falsifiants. (6) une proposition pour une formule étendue de la SF non-standard (7) on conclut sur le concept d’un adieu inventif fait aux philosophes qui ont été nos éducateurs.
Abstract:
(1) considérations générales concernant l’amplitude et l’inventivité du programme de recherche laruelléen. (2) présentation statique du livre, de sa structure et de ses thèmes. (3) présentation dynamique du livre, de ses mouvements, de son drame conceptuel, et de son rapport avec quelques traits définitoires du genre de la science-fiction. (4) les trois critères que Laruelle propose en vue d’une formule permettant la refondation du genre de la science-fiction (5) la mise à l’épreuve de ses hypothèses par l’examen de quelques exemples potentiellement falsifiants. (6) une proposition pour une formule étendue de la SF non-standard (7) on conclut sur le concept d’un adieu inventif fait aux philosophes qui ont été nos éducateurs.
Research Interests:
ALIEN and 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY have in common a de-familiarising and radical opening of space, so that space itself, with all the possibilities of encounter that it contains, may be the true alien. ALIEN is a Gothicising of 2001,... more
ALIEN and 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY have in common a de-familiarising and radical opening of space, so that space itself, with all the possibilities of encounter that it contains, may be the true alien. ALIEN is a Gothicising of 2001, translating it and making it accessible to a different sensibility. However, ALIEN also contains elements that exceed the Gothic version of the sublime. ALIEN, like 2001, is a film of becoming, except that ALIEN holds back from the becoming at the end, still presenting it in only negative terms, whereas 2001 takes Bowman through the becoming, despite the horror he went through as well.
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This article examines the role that the concepts of pluralism, the absolute, multiple infinities, testability, immanence, and subjectivation play in Deleuze's philosophy of the infinite.
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François Laruelle has felt the stifling and limited aspect of philosophy intensely for decades, to the point of calling his own philosophy "non-philosophy", and "non-standard philosophy". Faced with the many "turns" that are regularly... more
François Laruelle has felt the stifling and limited aspect of philosophy intensely for decades, to the point of calling his own philosophy "non-philosophy", and "non-standard philosophy". Faced with the many "turns" that are regularly announced to resolve our problems, Laruelle's solution is to take the image of the “turn” literally, mathematically. He employs the mathematics of complex numbers, to define his own non-philosophical turn as a "quarter turn", the result of multiplying standard philosophy (horizontal axis) by √-1. Unsurprisingly, Laruelle’s “quarter turn” has its precedent in science fiction, notably in the last published story of John W. Campbell, entitled "On the Nature of Angels".
Research Interests:
Cet article est le texte d'une conférence, prononcée il y a trois ans, avant la publication de la traduction française en octobre 2018. Abstract: J'essaie de voir ANATEM en termes d'une tendance générale, qui inclurait la philosophie, la... more
Cet article est le texte d'une conférence, prononcée il y a trois ans, avant la publication de la traduction française en octobre 2018.
Abstract: J'essaie de voir ANATEM en termes d'une tendance générale, qui inclurait la philosophie, la physique, et la science fiction. Étant donné que notre paradigme global ou notre image de pensée n'est plus le monisme (le Platonisme), comment pouvons-nous éviter la chute dans la démultiplication incontrôlée de jeux de langage (le relativisme)?
La multiplication de mondes au niveau objectuel reflète la multiplication de formalismes et de jeux de langage au méta-niveau. Comment pouvons-nous accommoder à la fois la plasticité du réel, qui permet une multiplicité des interprétations du monde et des modes de vie, et sa résistance, qui sélectionne parmi toutes ces possibilités seulement un petit nombre d'instances valides et viables.
Dans le roman ANATEM, les disputes entre la syntaxique et la sémantique, entre les théors et rhétors, et aussi entre les Protans et les Prociens, sont le reflet de ce dilemme.
Abstract: J'essaie de voir ANATEM en termes d'une tendance générale, qui inclurait la philosophie, la physique, et la science fiction. Étant donné que notre paradigme global ou notre image de pensée n'est plus le monisme (le Platonisme), comment pouvons-nous éviter la chute dans la démultiplication incontrôlée de jeux de langage (le relativisme)?
La multiplication de mondes au niveau objectuel reflète la multiplication de formalismes et de jeux de langage au méta-niveau. Comment pouvons-nous accommoder à la fois la plasticité du réel, qui permet une multiplicité des interprétations du monde et des modes de vie, et sa résistance, qui sélectionne parmi toutes ces possibilités seulement un petit nombre d'instances valides et viables.
Dans le roman ANATEM, les disputes entre la syntaxique et la sémantique, entre les théors et rhétors, et aussi entre les Protans et les Prociens, sont le reflet de ce dilemme.
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Thought does not only make use of images to give it concrete illustrations or applications, but is also organised in terms of certain overarching images that give form and plausibility to its exercise in a particular epoch. There are two... more
Thought does not only make use of images to give it concrete
illustrations or applications, but is also organised in terms of certain overarching images that give form and plausibility to its exercise in a particular epoch. There are two influential images of thought that have given rise to diverse contemporary metaphysical research programmes in Continental Philosophy: the quantum image and the performance image. These are articulated in opposition to the dominance of the structuralist image.
The most radical version of a philosophical project that elaborates a quantum image of thought is to be found in Slavoj Zizek’s recent work, while the most radical version of the performance image is given by
Bruno Latour’s AIME project.
François Laruelle attempts to give a version of the quantum image, and some of his followers have tried to develop a performance image in his name. In both cases their thought is not radical enough, because they
are caught in un-criticized structuralist presuppositions.
illustrations or applications, but is also organised in terms of certain overarching images that give form and plausibility to its exercise in a particular epoch. There are two influential images of thought that have given rise to diverse contemporary metaphysical research programmes in Continental Philosophy: the quantum image and the performance image. These are articulated in opposition to the dominance of the structuralist image.
The most radical version of a philosophical project that elaborates a quantum image of thought is to be found in Slavoj Zizek’s recent work, while the most radical version of the performance image is given by
Bruno Latour’s AIME project.
François Laruelle attempts to give a version of the quantum image, and some of his followers have tried to develop a performance image in his name. In both cases their thought is not radical enough, because they
are caught in un-criticized structuralist presuppositions.
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Over the past fifty years we have seen diverse attempts to incorporate insights and clues present in quantum mechanics into wider philosophical visions and modes of thought. It is not necessary to construct a formal "metaphysics of... more
Over the past fifty years we have seen diverse attempts to incorporate insights and clues present in quantum mechanics into wider philosophical visions and modes of thought. It is not necessary to construct a formal "metaphysics of quantum physics" to belong to this quantum turn. Contemporary thinkers such as Karen Barad, Slavoj Zizek, or Gilles Deleuze and his epigone François Laruelle prefer a more hermeneutic and heuristic informal approach that draws on quantum physics for some very general principles that can inspire our whole image of thought to take up new directions. Steve Fuller's thought is an original contribution makes use of this quantum image to give us a robust notion of post-truth that is not a form of relativism but a type of realism based on testability and democratic exchange.
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My path through the book is multiple, and comprises the following aspects: 1) a conceptual path centred on philosophical pluralism and on the book's concepts concerning the multiple types of infinites; 2) a poetic path centred on the... more
My path through the book is multiple, and comprises the following aspects: 1) a conceptual path centred on philosophical pluralism and on the book's concepts concerning the multiple types of infinites; 2) a poetic path centred on the movements of descent into the hell of the finitude of the waste product cut off from infinity, of purgation, and of ascension to Paradise (the paradise of the Absolute, or " Cantor's paradise "), and finally the re-descent into the finitude of the work " touched " by the infinite; 3) a linguistic path centred on the question of the type of language that is the most appropriate for speaking of our world and our life – Alain Badiou demonstrates the depth and fecundity of a philosophical language drawn from the mathematics of the higher infinite; 4) a contextual path centred on a comparison of Badiou's rigorous mathematically-based analysis and division of the concept of the infinite with Deleuze's more intuitive and poetic conceptions of the infinite in WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?; 5) a subjective path centred on what the book can change both in our relation to the infinite and in the reader's philosophical unconscious.
Research Interests: Continental Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, and 7 moreGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Badiou, Badiou's Ontology, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Alain Badiou, set theory, philosophical use of mathematics, Deleuze and Guattari, and Continental Philosophy: Alain Badiou
The aim of Badiou's book is to convince us that we live in L, the constructible universe, without being aware that this is the case ; guide us progressively from L to V, the class of all sets, the universe containing the large... more
The aim of Badiou's book is to convince us that we live in L, the constructible universe, without being aware that this is the case ; guide us progressively from L to V, the class of all sets, the universe containing the large non-constructible infinities, and elevate us to the « Absolute » (the philosophical name for V); and finally to take us down again into the finitude of L equipped with perceptions drawn from V, thus permitting us to re-index the world according to absoluteness and no longer in terms of relativity.
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ABSTRACT: Dans cette intervention je voudrais vous faire part de mon parcours de lecteur du nouveau livre d’Alain Badiou «L’Immanence des Vérités». Le but du livre est de nous convaincre que nous habitons L, l’univers constructible, sans... more
ABSTRACT: Dans cette intervention je voudrais vous faire part de mon parcours de lecteur du nouveau livre d’Alain Badiou «L’Immanence des Vérités». Le but du livre est de nous convaincre que nous habitons L, l’univers constructible, sans le savoir, nous faire passer de L à V, l’univers contenant les grands infinis non-constructibles et de nous élever à l’Absolu, nom philosophique de V, nous faire redescendre en L avec des perceptions tirées de V nous permettant de ré-indexer le monde selon l’absoluité plutôt que selon la relativité. Mon parcours comporte plusieurs aspects:
1) un parcours conceptuel, centré sur le pluralisme philosophique et sur les conceptions du livre concernant les divers types d’infinis.
2) un parcours poétique, centré sur les mouvements de la descente aux enfers de la finitude du déchet coupé de l’infini, de la purgation et de l’ascension au paradis de l’Absolu, et enfin de la redescente à la finitude de l’œuvre touchée par l’infini.
3) un parcours linguistique, centré sur la question du langage le plus approprié pour parler de notre monde contemporain et de notre vie? Badiou démontre la fécondité philosophique d’un langage tiré des mathématiques des grands infinis.
4) un parcours contextuel, via une comparaison de la division du concept de l’infini chez Badiou avec les conceptions deleuziennes de l’infini.
5) un parcours affectif, centré sur ce que le livre peut changer dans le rapport à l’infini et à l’inconscient philosophique du lecteur.
1) un parcours conceptuel, centré sur le pluralisme philosophique et sur les conceptions du livre concernant les divers types d’infinis.
2) un parcours poétique, centré sur les mouvements de la descente aux enfers de la finitude du déchet coupé de l’infini, de la purgation et de l’ascension au paradis de l’Absolu, et enfin de la redescente à la finitude de l’œuvre touchée par l’infini.
3) un parcours linguistique, centré sur la question du langage le plus approprié pour parler de notre monde contemporain et de notre vie? Badiou démontre la fécondité philosophique d’un langage tiré des mathématiques des grands infinis.
4) un parcours contextuel, via une comparaison de la division du concept de l’infini chez Badiou avec les conceptions deleuziennes de l’infini.
5) un parcours affectif, centré sur ce que le livre peut changer dans le rapport à l’infini et à l’inconscient philosophique du lecteur.
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ANTI-OEDIPUS is a transitional work, owing much in language and thought to the problematics it is trying to break from. The aim is to no longer think about our lives in psychoanalytical terms, but in "machinic", “uncertain, improbable”... more
ANTI-OEDIPUS is a transitional work, owing much in language and thought to the problematics it is trying to break from. The aim is to no longer think about our lives in psychoanalytical terms, but in "machinic", “uncertain, improbable” terms. This uncertain, improbable, or imaginative language is what Deleuze and Guattari are searching for in ANTI-OEDIPUS.
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LOGIC OF SENSE has the form of a virtual seminar, irrespective of whether its chapters were delivered as actual lessons or not. I have re-translated and analysed the first half of the first paragraph to bring out its conceptual structure,... more
LOGIC OF SENSE has the form of a virtual seminar, irrespective of whether its chapters were delivered as actual lessons or not. I have re-translated and analysed the first half of the first paragraph to bring out its conceptual structure, in particular the relation it establishes between logical grammar and ontology. This analysis allows us to situate the book within the semiotic turn that characterised the major French thinkers of the second half of the 20th Century.
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In this review essay I am reading Zizek’s DISPARITIES as he asks it to be read, against the grain, following the guiding thread of the disparate in his text and drawing a simple line of demarcation between the disparate and the monist... more
In this review essay I am reading Zizek’s DISPARITIES as he asks it to be read, against the grain, following the guiding thread of the disparate in his text and drawing a simple line of demarcation between the disparate and the monist elements. This is the same method that Zizek is both advocating and illustrating in this book. DISPARITIES is an act of “philosophical warfare”. It is written as a political intervention in the domain of theory, in favour of a new or non-standard practice of philosophy.
Zizek agrees with Althusser’s thesis that philosophy is class struggle in the field of theory, and specifies that here it is a question of a “struggle against the different forms of obfuscating disparity”. He favours division and struggle rather than dialogue and consensus. He wishes to draw a line of demarcation between the deployment of disparity ("ontological difference"") and its obfuscation.
I argue that we can share Zizek’s concerns without necessarily adopting all of his conclusions. Another way of formulating this struggle would be as the attempt to formulate a view of the universe as open (and recall that Zizek has said that for the true materialist the universe is open all the way down) without falling into postmodern relativism. We need both disparity and realism.
From the perspective of meta-ontology Zizek's concept of disparity is a contribution to the task of thinking the real with the right combination of plasticity and resistance, of subjectivity and testability, of pluralism and realism.
Zizek agrees with Althusser’s thesis that philosophy is class struggle in the field of theory, and specifies that here it is a question of a “struggle against the different forms of obfuscating disparity”. He favours division and struggle rather than dialogue and consensus. He wishes to draw a line of demarcation between the deployment of disparity ("ontological difference"") and its obfuscation.
I argue that we can share Zizek’s concerns without necessarily adopting all of his conclusions. Another way of formulating this struggle would be as the attempt to formulate a view of the universe as open (and recall that Zizek has said that for the true materialist the universe is open all the way down) without falling into postmodern relativism. We need both disparity and realism.
From the perspective of meta-ontology Zizek's concept of disparity is a contribution to the task of thinking the real with the right combination of plasticity and resistance, of subjectivity and testability, of pluralism and realism.
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THE LAST DAYS OF NEW PARIS by China Miéville awakens our sense of wonder with the explosion of imagery, of erudition, and of poetry that the book contains. The novella embodies what it describes: the surrealist Resistance to the Nazi... more
THE LAST DAYS OF NEW PARIS by China Miéville awakens our sense of wonder with the explosion of imagery, of erudition, and of poetry that the book contains. The novella embodies what it describes: the surrealist Resistance to the Nazi occupation of Paris has led to the creation of a surrealist bomb, whose explosion produces an "S-Blast" that has liberated a myriad of "manifestations", impossible entities freed from surrealist painting and sculptures to wreak havoc on the Nazi occupying forces. It is at once a masterfully told story and an inspiring manifesto, an ode to the liberating power of poetic fantasy, and to the creations, and the lives, of those who are steeped in it. The poetry, the beauty, the freedom, and the adventure all recall the excitement one feels in reading Deleuze and Guattari's works and their "schizoanalytic" liberation of the unconscious. Michel Foucault in his preface to their book ANTI-OEDIPUS declared that it could be characterised as an "introduction to the non-fascist life". This non-fascist formula of resistance and (self-)creation comes to life again in the pages of Miéville's THE LAST DAYS OF NEW PARIS. This paper argues that Miéville's weird fantasy can be seen as a work of noetic estrangement, altering not only our cognitive premises but also our imaginative syntheses. Its weird ontology participates in a more general movement of overturning and immanentising Platonism in favour of an ontology of pluralist abundance.
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This paper attempts to evaluate the AIME project immanently, from the perspective of a participant, in terms of five criteria: digitality, diplomacy, religiosity, testability, and democracy. A sixth criterion runs through the other five:... more
This paper attempts to evaluate the AIME project immanently, from the perspective of a participant, in terms of five criteria: digitality, diplomacy, religiosity, testability, and democracy. A sixth criterion runs through the other five: pluralism. I distinguish between AIME as project, as process, and as party line.
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in a very interesting article (the text of a talk given in September 2001), entitled "Existe-t-il quelque chose comme une politique deleuzienne?" ("Does something like a Deleuzian politics exist?"), devoted to the subject of Deleuze and... more
in a very interesting article (the text of a talk given in September 2001), entitled "Existe-t-il quelque chose comme une politique deleuzienne?" ("Does something like a Deleuzian politics exist?"), devoted to the subject of Deleuze and politics, Badiou goes out of his way to be just with Deleuze’s ideas and to highlight their points of convergence.
Badiou does not always show the same concern for a charitable and equitable reading, and often he is quite reductive and quite polemical. However, in this text he is trying hard to do Deleuze justice, while still indicating their points of disaccord. This is why I wish to give the text an extended analysis.
Badiou does not always show the same concern for a charitable and equitable reading, and often he is quite reductive and quite polemical. However, in this text he is trying hard to do Deleuze justice, while still indicating their points of disaccord. This is why I wish to give the text an extended analysis.
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Badiou's only published letter from his two year correspondence with Deleuze.
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THE THIRD TABLE is very interesting and revealing, as it contains a concise overview of the central themes of Harman’s object-oriented philosophy. The style is quite engaging as Harman manages to expound his ideas in the form of a... more
THE THIRD TABLE is very interesting and revealing, as it contains a concise overview of the central themes of Harman’s object-oriented philosophy. The style is quite engaging as Harman manages to expound his ideas in the form of a response to Sir Arthur Eddington’s famous two table argument.
This argument famously contrasts the familiar solid, substantial table of common sense with the the insubstantial swarm of particles moving rapidly in what is mostly empty space that constitutes the table as modern physics envisages it. Referring to Eddington’s classical argument allows Harman to couch his own analysis in terms of a running engagement with reductionism, in both its humanistic and scientistic forms.
To overcome the conflict between Eddington’s two tables, Harman posits the existence of a “third table”, the only real table, that is meant to exemplify his OOP’s new nonreductionist approach to objects. In my review I argue that Harman’s account of each of the three tables is very unsatisfying.
Finally, I compare Harman’s OOP with Paul Feyerabend’s ontology, and I conclude that OOP is a naïve and dogmatic form of negative theology.
This argument famously contrasts the familiar solid, substantial table of common sense with the the insubstantial swarm of particles moving rapidly in what is mostly empty space that constitutes the table as modern physics envisages it. Referring to Eddington’s classical argument allows Harman to couch his own analysis in terms of a running engagement with reductionism, in both its humanistic and scientistic forms.
To overcome the conflict between Eddington’s two tables, Harman posits the existence of a “third table”, the only real table, that is meant to exemplify his OOP’s new nonreductionist approach to objects. In my review I argue that Harman’s account of each of the three tables is very unsatisfying.
Finally, I compare Harman’s OOP with Paul Feyerabend’s ontology, and I conclude that OOP is a naïve and dogmatic form of negative theology.
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This is my review of Graham Harman's book THE THIRD TABLE (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012). In this book Harman gives an account of Sir Arthur Eddington's famous two tables argument, and proposes a "third table" to exemplify a purportedly new... more
This is my review of Graham Harman's book THE THIRD TABLE (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012). In this book Harman gives an account of Sir Arthur Eddington's famous two tables argument, and proposes a "third table" to exemplify a purportedly new and non-reductionist approach to objects. I argue that his account of each of the three tables is ultimately unsatisfying. Finally, I compare Harman's OOO with Feyerabend's ontology and conclude that OOO is a naïve, dogmatic, and self-contradictory form of negative theology.
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Why did post-structuralism cease to make use of the concept of ideology? asks Bernard Stiegler. The question is interesting, even if Stiegler's answer is unsatisfying, and his presuppositions erroneous.. Deleuze, Lyotard, Foucault... more
Why did post-structuralism cease to make use of the concept of ideology? asks Bernard Stiegler. The question is interesting, even if Stiegler's answer is unsatisfying, and his presuppositions erroneous..
Deleuze, Lyotard, Foucault carried out ideological critique throughout their work, even if they made little use of the word "ideology". They did not participate in the movement of forgetting ideology described by Stiegler, but they were very critical of the binary opposition between "science" and "ideology". They thus searched for a different terminology to allow them to include the critique of another modern ideology: scientism. If Deleuze and Guattari state in RHIZOME that there is no "ideology", they also affirm that there is no "science" either, but only assemblages. However assemblages are not all equal, for example some are more deterritorialised while others are more stratified.
Deleuze, Lyotard, Foucault carried out ideological critique throughout their work, even if they made little use of the word "ideology". They did not participate in the movement of forgetting ideology described by Stiegler, but they were very critical of the binary opposition between "science" and "ideology". They thus searched for a different terminology to allow them to include the critique of another modern ideology: scientism. If Deleuze and Guattari state in RHIZOME that there is no "ideology", they also affirm that there is no "science" either, but only assemblages. However assemblages are not all equal, for example some are more deterritorialised while others are more stratified.
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Paul Feyerabend is often associated with a destructive criticism leading to an anarchism that flouts every rule and a relativism that treats all opinions as equal. This negative stereotype is based on ignorance and rumour rather than on... more
Paul Feyerabend is often associated with a destructive criticism leading to an anarchism that flouts every rule and a relativism that treats all opinions as equal. This negative stereotype is based on ignorance and rumour rather than on any real engagement with his texts. Feyerabend's work from beginning to end turns around problems of ontology and realism, culminating in the outlines of a sophisticated form of pluralist realism. This largely unknown ontological turn taken by Feyerabend in the last decade of his life was based on four strands of argument: historical considerations, cosmological criticism, complementarity, and the primacy of democracy.
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Contrary to a persistent interpretation this book does not express the point of view of the end. "Old age" is not taken as denoting a chronlogical stage of corresponding to a weakening of energy, but as an intensive state characterised by... more
Contrary to a persistent interpretation this book does not express the point of view of the end. "Old age" is not taken as denoting a chronlogical stage of corresponding to a weakening of energy, but as an intensive state characterised by a transgression of limits.
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Abstract: This paper summarises my various analyses of the AIME project and evaluates it in terms of five criteria: diplomacy, originality, digitality, testability, and democracy.
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In his new book MÉTAPHYSIQUE DU BONHEUR RÉEL ("Metaphysics of Real Happiness", 2015 ), Alain Badiou asserts and attempts to elucidate the relation between real happiness and the philosophical life, between the cultivation of a happy life... more
In his new book MÉTAPHYSIQUE DU BONHEUR RÉEL ("Metaphysics of Real Happiness", 2015 ), Alain Badiou asserts and attempts to elucidate the relation between real happiness and the philosophical life, between the cultivation of a happy life and the search for truth. He tells us from the beginning that for him the link between philosophy and happiness is an existential necessity.
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This is my full review of Wolfendale’s book on Harman’s OOO. The book is quite interesting, but ultimately disappointing. Wolfendale has too much in common with Harman to provide a convincing alternative. I like the defence of... more
This is my full review of Wolfendale’s book on Harman’s OOO. The book is quite interesting, but ultimately disappointing. Wolfendale has too much in common with Harman to provide a convincing alternative. I like the defence of speculation, but not the scientism.
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LATOUR'S AGON: SYSTEMATISE vs PLURALISE
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In this article I take a critical look at the origins and sources of Bruno Latour's pluralism as it is expressed in his book AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE, and compare it to other similar projects (Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, Badiou).... more
In this article I take a critical look at the origins and sources of Bruno Latour's pluralism as it is expressed in his book AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE, and compare it to other similar projects (Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, Badiou). I consider the accusations of reductionism and of relativism, and demonstrate that Latour's «empirical metaphysics» is not an ontological reductionism but a pluralist ontology recognising the existence of a plurality of entities and of types of entities. Nor is it an epistemological relativism but an ontological pluralism affirming the existence of a plurality of types of existence. These two strands, pluralist ontology and ontological pluralism, mutually reinforce each other to produce at least the outlines of a robust pluralist realism.
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Rough draft: Latour's metaphysical system in AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE is not descriptive and empirical, but a priori and prescriptive. The treatment of religion is particulalarly revealing of how the fable of an ethnographic... more
Rough draft: Latour's metaphysical system in AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE is not descriptive and empirical, but a priori and prescriptive. The treatment of religion is particulalarly revealing of how the fable of an ethnographic investigation serves to legitimate autobiographical prejudices as if they were the result of independent research.
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This is a review of David Cole's CAPITALISED EDUCATION:
AN IMMANENT MATERIALIST ACCOUNT OF KATE MIDDLETON
AN IMMANENT MATERIALIST ACCOUNT OF KATE MIDDLETON
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R. Scott Bakker's diverse declarations about a so-called "blind brain" theory typically contain two claims: 1) we are natural (naturalist hypothesis), and 2) we cannot intuit ourselves as natural (restricted metacognitive blindness... more
R. Scott Bakker's diverse declarations about a so-called "blind brain" theory typically contain two claims: 1) we are natural (naturalist hypothesis), and 2) we cannot intuit ourselves as natural (restricted metacognitive blindness hypothesis). These two claims do not constitute a theory, but are vague postulates associated with a supposed theory that has never been stated. (1) is very general, and banal. (2) is more specific, and false. In fact the opposite of (2) is true: we can and often do intuit ourselves as natural. Bakker confounds enouncing a theory and citing evidence for a theory. He contents himself with amassing a hodgepodge of diverse poorly interpreted and insufficiently contextualised results, adopted uncritically, from the cognitive sciences. Unfortunately, there is no “Blind Brain Theory”. What Bakker expresses is a Stimmung based on a ragbag of impressions and disjointed readings, that cannot even be coherently formulated as a theory.
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Commentary on a fragment from Deleuze and Guattari's WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
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Derrida's incipit is very well written, giving us a sense of the philosophical context and of the problematic that Derrida is trying to transform and to make a contribution to, while maintaining a sense of ambiguity. This ambiguity is... more
Derrida's incipit is very well written, giving us a sense of the philosophical context and of the problematic that Derrida is trying to transform and to make a contribution to, while maintaining a sense of ambiguity. This ambiguity is dynamic, making use of modalisation and intertextuality to disrupt subjective certainties and to hinder the formation of a new set of stereotypes. The fecundity of this strong ambiguity can be seen in the fact that the text continues to have an impact today, its destabilising and reinforcing power remains outside its original context.
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Feyerabend’s STORIES FROM PAOLINO’S TAPES is composed of fragments from the recordings he made for his wife Grazia Borrini while they were apart. In the latter part of his life Feyerabend led a nomadic existence as a philosophy lecturer,... more
Feyerabend’s STORIES FROM PAOLINO’S TAPES is composed of fragments from the recordings he made for his wife Grazia Borrini while they were apart. In the latter part of his life Feyerabend led a nomadic existence as a philosophy lecturer, traveling between Zurich, Berkeley, and Rome. These stories are fragments from an amorous discourse addressed to “Grazia”, in which nothing is said of love directly but where Feyerabend talks of his passions: theatre, opera, cinema, science, philosophy, popular song, boxing.
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I defend the pluralist realism of Bruno Latour and Paul Feyerabend from its conflation with a vapid relativism of worldviews in which all opinions have equal validity.
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This is a sequel to my review of Graham Harman's THE THIRD TABLE. I compare Harman’s OOO, which exemplifies a regression in relation to the recent Continental philosophy, to the ideas of two contemporary thinkers, François Laruelle and... more
This is a sequel to my review of Graham Harman's THE THIRD TABLE. I compare Harman’s OOO, which exemplifies a regression in relation to the recent Continental philosophy, to the ideas of two contemporary thinkers, François Laruelle and Bruno Latour, who defend a more pluralist vision.
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In the context of a pluralist critique of linguistic idealism and of social constructivism I consider Adrian Johnston’s transcendental research programme and compare it to a generic scientistic materialist paradigm. I conclude that... more
In the context of a pluralist critique of linguistic idealism and of social constructivism I consider Adrian Johnston’s transcendental research programme and compare it to a generic scientistic materialist paradigm. I conclude that pluralism should encourage speculation that is in close relation to the sciences without being reducible to them, but that eliminativism as long as it denies its own status as metaphysical speculation degenerates into a new form of scientistic dogma.
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A Non-Laruellian take on Bryant’s use of Lacan’s Gaph of Sexuation
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Video link: https://archive.org/details/FeyerabendsCosmologicalPluralism Paul Feyerabend is most often associated with a destructive criticism leading to an anarchism that flouts every rule and to a relativism that treats all opinions... more
Video link: https://archive.org/details/FeyerabendsCosmologicalPluralism
Paul Feyerabend is most often associated with a destructive criticism leading to an anarchism that flouts every rule and to a relativism that treats all opinions as equal. This negative stereotype is based on ignorance and rumour rather than on any real engagement with his texts. Feyerabend’s work from beginning to end turns around problems of ontology and realism, culminating in the outlines of a sophisticated form of pluralist realism. The still largely unknown ontological turn taken by Feyerabend’s work in the last decade of his life was based on four strands of argument: the historical approach, cosmological criticism, the quantum analogy (complementarity), and the primacy of democracy.
Paul Feyerabend is most often associated with a destructive criticism leading to an anarchism that flouts every rule and to a relativism that treats all opinions as equal. This negative stereotype is based on ignorance and rumour rather than on any real engagement with his texts. Feyerabend’s work from beginning to end turns around problems of ontology and realism, culminating in the outlines of a sophisticated form of pluralist realism. The still largely unknown ontological turn taken by Feyerabend’s work in the last decade of his life was based on four strands of argument: the historical approach, cosmological criticism, the quantum analogy (complementarity), and the primacy of democracy.
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François Laruelle is a prominent French philosopher who is only just beginning to be read and studied in English. He has produced an abundant oeuvre, of which only a small part has been translated into English. There exist some... more
François Laruelle is a prominent French philosopher who is only just beginning to be read and studied in English. He has produced an abundant oeuvre, of which only a small part has been translated into English. There exist some introductory works expounding the basic ideas of his "non-philosophy", but the time has come for a critical analysis of some of his major theses. Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/PLURALISING-LARUELLE-Non-Laruellean-visions-ones-ebook/dp/B07W76G23T/
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The basic principle of Laruelle's "non-philosophy" can be traced back to Bachelard's "philosophy of non-". Laruelle does not have Bachelard's knowledge of science nor his elegance of style. However, unlike Bachelard, Laruelle has... more
The basic principle of Laruelle's "non-philosophy" can be traced back to Bachelard's "philosophy of non-". Laruelle does not have Bachelard's knowledge of science nor his elegance of style. However, unlike Bachelard, Laruelle has knowledge of the early works of post-structuralism and tried at first to create a new synthesis from them, and then to go off on his own road. Laruelle does occasionally discuss contemporary fellow thinkers such as Deleuze and Badiou, but his readings of these followers are demonstrably erroneous. So his scientific scholarship is wanting, as is his practice of dialogue with his contemporaries, but his tenacity in following his own path is admirable. Not everyone can be at the forefront. We must therefore construe Laruelle's treatment of rival figures as not constituting an objective representation of the real philosophers, but as the dramatised deployment of a set of conceptual characters. He considers that these other thinkers have failed immanence while he has succeeded. In fact the objects of his critique are not "rivals" but authors of alternative systems, achieving some of his goals in different ways. Despite Laruelle's anxiety of influence and his tenacious misreadings the appeal of his work lies in its exemplarity. Laruelle is a great reader of contemporary French philosophy who then went on to create his own system of thought, and whose thinking continues to evolve. His path is exemplary of someone who, after absorbing the influence of the structuralist/post-structuralist nebula in his earlier years, went on to deconstruct his way out of it and to speak in his own name.
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Laruelle occasionally discusses contemporary fellow thinkers such as Deleuze and Badiou, but I have argued on my blog (AGENT SWARM) and in my more synthetic articles, that we can construe Laruelle's treatment of these figures as not... more
Laruelle occasionally discusses contemporary fellow thinkers such as Deleuze and Badiou, but I have argued on my blog (AGENT SWARM) and in my more synthetic articles, that we can construe Laruelle's treatment of these figures as not constituting the objective representation of the real philosophers, but as the dramatised deployment of a set of conceptual characters. This dramatised (or "operatic", to use Laruelle's term) reading is not how the official Anglophone disciples of Laruelle read him, displaying as they do a deplorable tendency towards naive realism in their approach to their master-thinker. My own approach to reading Laruelle could be called "post-Laruellean pluralism", or "non-Laruellean non-philosophy". To make the discussion more precise I list forty points of convergence and divergence.
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Although François Laruelle makes far-reaching claims about his new practice of "non-philosophy" and about its "scientific" use of philosophical material, it is interesting to see that he shows no sign of taking potential falsifying... more
Although François Laruelle makes far-reaching claims about his new practice of "non-philosophy" and about its "scientific" use of philosophical material, it is interesting to see that he shows no sign of taking potential falsifying instances seriously, preferring to remain in the element of sweeping generalities. The evolution of Gilles Deleuze’s thought provides a good example of such a falsifying instance, that Laruelle fails to deal with, due to his blindness to Deleuze’s creative practice of constant self-criticism and heuristic rupture.
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My theoretical work is organised around two heuristic hypotheses: 1) contemporary Continental Philosophies can usefully be viewed as metaphysical research programmes in Karl Popper's sense 2) within the domain of contemporary Continental... more
My theoretical work is organised around two heuristic hypotheses: 1) contemporary Continental Philosophies can usefully be viewed as metaphysical research programmes in Karl Popper's sense 2) within the domain of contemporary Continental Philosophy a reconceptualisation of pluralism as ontological realism is taking place. It is from this perspective that I examine François Laruelle's "non-philosophy" and "non-standard philosophy" as metaphysical research programmes. I analyse its failure to live up to its own criteria and evaluate it in terms of a set of pragmatic meta-ontological criteria. Laruelle correctly identifies the "vice" of philosophical sufficiency but is himself unable to propose a fully-developped virtuous alternative. In view of Laruelle's claims to scientific status and of his inability to respect his own criteria we must conclude that Laruellean non-philosophy is pseudo-science.
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Against mechanistic Marxist and crypto-theological religionist readings of Laruelle's non-standard philosophy this article proposes a "quantum" reading of Laruelle's incipit to his magnum opus: NON-STANDARD PHILOSOPHY. It appears from... more
Against mechanistic Marxist and crypto-theological religionist readings of Laruelle's non-standard philosophy this article proposes a "quantum" reading of Laruelle's incipit to his magnum opus: NON-STANDARD PHILOSOPHY. It appears from this reading that Laruelle's non-standard philosophy is quite close to Deleuze and Guattari's later philosophy.
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Laruelle's "non-Marxism" is an interim report, coming between his ethicist phase (Philosophy III) and his religionist phase (Philosophy IV). By applying his non-philosophical approach to a single philosophical material Laruelle is still... more
Laruelle's "non-Marxism" is an interim report, coming between his ethicist phase (Philosophy III) and his religionist phase (Philosophy IV). By applying his non-philosophical approach to a single philosophical material Laruelle is still able to extend Marxism but remains caught in a form of monism. This form of monism, called suture by Badiou, consists of being bound to a particular thought-world and of giving it primacy. It is only in his later "quantum" phase (Philosophie V) that Laruelle overcomes this defect, by means of the superposition of a plurality of thought-worlds.
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This is a first draft for an overview of Laruelle's development, all comments are welcome.In this text am trying to see non-philosophy as a path rather than as an illuminated state attained by conversion to a set of principles. The... more
This is a first draft for an overview of Laruelle's development, all comments are welcome.In this text am trying to see non-philosophy as a path rather than as an illuminated state attained by conversion to a set of principles. The non-philosophical conversion is not an all-or-none once-and-for-all event. It comes in degrees and flashes, or in successive waves, and may well be different for each individual. The non-philosopher is not at the end of his or her journey, but is on the way to immanence, under the condition of immanence itself.
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Laruelle 's critique of the system of difference repeats belatedly Deleuze's own self-criticism of his pre-Guattari phase as being still entangled in the domain of representation. More generally, Laruelle, despite his considerable merits,... more
Laruelle 's critique of the system of difference repeats belatedly Deleuze's own self-criticism of his pre-Guattari phase as being still entangled in the domain of representation. More generally, Laruelle, despite his considerable merits, is systematically wrong when he assigns Deleuze to the realm of philosophical sufficiency ( “representation”, in Deleuze's terms). Despite his deep and intense non-philosophical voyage Laruelle is incapable of reading Deleuze and Guattari’s works up to and including their WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? in terms of the relation with the outside, because he has not measured what the collaboration of Deleuze and Guattari brought to both of them.
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I found Laruelle's book CHRISTO-FICTION intriguing but obscure, so I tried to clarify it by means of a comparison with Bruno Latour's writings on religion. Laruelle himself says he has always made use of such a “collider” approach,... more
I found Laruelle's book CHRISTO-FICTION intriguing but obscure, so I tried to clarify it by means of a comparison with Bruno Latour's writings on religion. Laruelle himself says he has always made use of such a “collider” approach, working constantly with two or more philosophers and making them enter into collision to overcome their incompleteness and to attain genericity.
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The aim of this essay is to argue that we must reject the concept of the "syntax of the real" as being incompatible with the rest of Laruelle's system and as expressing the worst sort of naive empiricism.
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I argue that the reception of Laruelle’s work in the English speaking world has been hindered by the ignorance of its own context, problematics, and stakes and their conflation with the situation, agenda and presuppositions of one or... more
I argue that the reception of Laruelle’s work in the English speaking world has been hindered by the ignorance of its own context, problematics, and stakes and their conflation with the situation, agenda and presuppositions of one or another particular aspect of Anglophone philosophy, as represented and promoted by particular interest groups. Far from representing a new pinnacle of critical awareness, non-philosophy is in danger of legitimating a new credulity.
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Laruelle III (1996) implicitly admits that Derrida was right in his critique of Laruelle II (1988).
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I was disappointed with Zizek's review, as it was less ontologically oriented and more reductively Oedipal and political than his comments on the original BLADE RUNNER in his THE TICKLISH SUBJECT. K passes the Turing test, the empathy... more
I was disappointed with Zizek's review, as it was less ontologically oriented and more reductively Oedipal and political than his comments on the original BLADE RUNNER in his THE TICKLISH SUBJECT. K passes the Turing test, the empathy test, and even Zizek's counterfactuality test.
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This text argues against the analyses of those writers and thinkers who seek to establish a demarcation in Lovecraft between the works of pure horror and those belonging to the dream cycle. The same noetic estrangement underlies both, and... more
This text argues against the analyses of those writers and thinkers who seek to establish a demarcation in Lovecraft between the works of pure horror and those belonging to the dream cycle. The same noetic estrangement underlies both, and the arbitrary privileging of the horror over the dream excludes Lovecraft’s unitary vision of such estrangement or weirdness. This unitary perspective on horror and the dream can be elaborated in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the noetic estrangement manifested in science-fiction and Bernard Stiegler's similar concept of the dream.
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Can a copy be as good as, or even better than, the original? If not a copy, then a creative repetition? Can the successor species to humanity, or the sequel to a film, have a soul? I greatly enjoyed BLADE RUNNER 2049 but I do not share... more
Can a copy be as good as, or even better than, the original? If not a copy, then a creative repetition? Can the successor species to humanity, or the sequel to a film, have a soul? I greatly enjoyed BLADE RUNNER 2049 but I do not share the opinion that it somehow "surpasses" the original film. My impression is that the new film is a pedagogical sequel. It is much more explicit about some of the issues raised by the first film, and even about its enigmas, which are no longer simply suggested but explicitly discussed.
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What are the characteristic features of contemporary Continental philosophy that give it its distinctive style of rationality? A year ago in response to Noam Chomsky’s demagogic and tendentious dismissal of Slavoj Zizek as “irrational”,... more
What are the characteristic features of contemporary Continental philosophy that give it its distinctive style of rationality? A year ago in response to Noam Chomsky’s demagogic and tendentious dismissal of Slavoj Zizek as “irrational”, and also in response to the publication of Zizek’s book LESS THAN NOTHING, I set out in a series of blog posts sixteen traits typical of the style of rationality of Continental philosophy that Zizek's book exemplifies, from even a cursory scanning of its first pages. In this text I first list the original set of sixteen traits, now augmented to twenty, and then proceed to explicate them in the context of the controversy between Zizek and Chomsky over the sense and utility of Continental Philosophy.
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This text gives advice to those who wish to get acquainted with the principle ideas of Object-Oriented Ontology but who do not know where to start nor how to evaluate its claims.
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The ontological and existential underpinnings of the blog AGENT SWARM are described in their generality. Deleuze, Badiou, Stiegler, and Latour are shown to belong to the same movement of immanentising Plato. Objectarians (OOO) and... more
The ontological and existential underpinnings of the blog AGENT SWARM are described in their generality. Deleuze, Badiou, Stiegler, and Latour are shown to belong to the same movement of immanentising Plato. Objectarians (OOO) and Unitarians (Laruelle's (non-)philosophy of the One) are shown to be its waste products.
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This is an interview on pluralism I conducted with Michel Serres in his home in Paris in 1980. It was published in ON THE BEACH, No. 6 Spring 1984 and 7/8 Summer-Autumn 1985, and was translated into English by Ross Gibson. My reflections... more
This is an interview on pluralism I conducted with Michel Serres in his home in Paris in 1980. It was published in ON THE BEACH, No. 6 Spring 1984 and 7/8 Summer-Autumn 1985, and was translated into English by Ross Gibson. My reflections on this interview and on the intellectual context I discovered in France at that time are contained in a companion text: PLURALIST FLEXI-ONTOLOGY. See: https://www.academia.edu/42083394/PLURALIST_FLEXI-ONTOLOGY_Deleuze_Lyotard_Serres_Feyerabend_
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Michel Serres book ROME: THE FIRST BOOK OF FOUNDATIONS is an excellent example of a pluralist thought that enacts the pluralism that it describes. It moves from the monist mimetic violence described in the first chapter, "1 BLACK BOX: The... more
Michel Serres book ROME: THE FIRST BOOK OF FOUNDATIONS is an excellent example of a pluralist thought that enacts the pluralism that it describes. It moves from the monist mimetic violence described in the first chapter, "1 BLACK BOX: The Trampled Multiplicity", to the pluralist peace of the last chapter, "8 IN THE FIELD: The Multiplicity in Peace". The true foundation is a non-foundation, not the violence of tragedy, but the peace of multiplicities.