tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post719637467143214324..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: Speculative Realism, just for startersskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-87243283063231198112010-02-02T12:36:53.416-08:002010-02-02T12:36:53.416-08:00Sorry for the weird line structure. I had to copy ...Sorry for the weird line structure. I had to copy and paste and ran into some format issues.dy0geneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12265699357881251867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-44334063336654373562010-02-02T12:33:28.993-08:002010-02-02T12:33:28.993-08:00PART II
I was more equipped to follow Brassier...PART II<br /><br />I was more equipped to follow Brassier's discussion on Nietzsche's failed attempt to overcome nihilism. I must say I've always read<br />Nietzsche for his critique and psychological insights rather than what he tried to build up. Part of me has always felt a little disappointed with "eternal return". It barely coheres as a mathematical idea much less as a deep foundation for a new philosophy. So I probably didn't take it seriously enough. I found Brassier's criticism of it illuminating. Nietzsche felt the need for a new Moses but I think he knew he wasn't up for the task. Nietzsche was no Joseph Smith or even an Elrond Hubbard and the religion he was looking to found was of a different sort. I don't know the citation but someplace he said what was needed was a scientific Buddhism. Not until I read this critique did I realize that he was trying to do just that with the "creative" agenda he had set for himself.<br /><br />The contradiction Brassier points out is that eternal return:<br /><br />"It exterminates all known values because it is the assertion of absolute eternal indifference, without even a "finale of nothingness" to punctuate the sequence or to distinguish between beginning or end"<br /><br />To my ear this sounds a lot like the emptiness that is neither born nor dies in Buddhist thought. It is all meaningless suffering. But Nietzsche posits an affirmative "redemption" by willing the world<br />to be exactly what it is. Brassier goes on to point out that this affirmative act that "divides history in two" completely undermines the previous devaluation of eternal return (as it was intended to do) and<br />makes the whole agenda very problematic. I think that's an interesting and well argued attack. But what struck me while reading this is how similar the moment of affirmation is to the sometimes repeated myth of the Buddha's enlightenment. Some Buddhists maintain that when enlightenment happened for the Buddha it actually happened to the whole<br />world. Enlightenment was not only a personal experience but a cosmological one.<br /><br />I don't "believe" that particular myth but I found it be an interesting parallel. It would not surprise me if Nietzsche was mindful of this parallel. I think Nietzsche was well grounded to think that scientific Buddhism may be a good candidate for the post platonic world view. Currently however, it looks like the upper hand goes to a sort of constitutional capitalism, a fascism-light.<br /><br />One last thought on this topic. The work of Genpo Roshi sort of follows this pattern. He calls it Big Mind and it uses Jungian psychoanalysis with Zen practice.dy0geneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12265699357881251867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-8643990652803123112010-02-02T12:27:02.119-08:002010-02-02T12:27:02.119-08:00I've finished reading Nihil Unbound. I enjoyed...I've finished reading Nihil Unbound. I enjoyed it. I sort of got the sense that the author had gathered us around under the stars to tell us ghost stories. He seems to assume that we fear both the dark and the ghosts. In my case he's at least a little right, enough that I found it engaging.<br /><br />Much of the material he discussed was new to me so I'm a very poor and biased reader. I confess that I've not been much blessed by the post-Nietzchean philosophical tradition, mostly because it offends me. Especially the continental thinkers seem to me overly addicted to jargon and the conceit that they hold some secret so precious that I would take my time to undress them. Esotericism is justified in the writings of thinkers who live under real oppression, whose ideas may cause them social or physical harm if they are spoken too clearly. Obscurity in the writings of the post-modern writers seems to me an affectation, they use it to give themselves cred. In reality they could clearly have said whatever thought crosses their minds and nobody would bat an eye. So they dress themselves up to look like their oppressed ancestors like white boys trying to do rap. In the end, I have viewed most of it as academic careerism. <br /><br />I am happy to have an author like Brassier make me rethink these prejudices. Although at times I sense that his exasperation may exceed my own, mostly because he didn't just walk away.<br /><br />The great thinkers that most affected the 20th and 21st thinkers have not been those recognized as doing "Philosophy" per se. Darwin is clearly the greatest of them all. Freud, Jung, E. O. Wilson, Gould, Einstein, Marx, Keynes, Hayek--I think you can see my biases. Phenomenology just hasn't floated my boat.dy0geneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12265699357881251867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-4324865340431661242010-01-16T18:55:31.413-08:002010-01-16T18:55:31.413-08:00Joe,
As regards Meillassoux, I'm not sure it ...Joe,<br /><br />As regards Meillassoux, I'm not sure it *does* fundamentally differ. The end of 'After Finitude'--a beautifully succinct book, incidentally (almost deceptively so--by which I mean that it can charm one a little)--does lay out a vision of a completely contingent reality which exists *for no reason.* (M. expressly rejects the principle of sufficient reason, and then rather ingeniously argues that one must however accept the principle of non-contradiction *because* one rejects the principle of sufficient reason.)<br /><br />However, I'll respond as regards Harman since he is the member of this foursome I know best. (I hasten to add, that is not so well... I have read only Guerrilla Metaphysics and a number of his online articles, plus following his blog). In one of his most recent and most substantive blog posts--I'll include a bunch more links in my next SR post-- Harman responds to Pete Wolfendale's Deontologistics blog and notes that he feels quite close to Whitehead (and certainly draws upon him), as opposed to Bergson (or Deleuze). Harman has explicitly distanced himself a little from the other SR'ists, (though he does endorse the label) and calls his own approach Object-Oriented Philosophy (or Ontology), in part because of this very difference. Delueze's influence, as you know, has been remarkably widespread in the past couple of decades, and Badiou's (somewhat idiosyncratic, it is true) interpretation of Deleuze has certainly impacted Meillassoux and Brassier at least. But Harman (quite plausibly, I think) sees Deleuze and Bergson as favoring (in ontology) the continuous over the discrete; Whitehead (and Harman following him) opts for the discrete. As one who has wrestled with Levinas I can only applaud this on Harman's part, as I hold that *encounter* is phenomenologically prior to identity. (Ontologically things are different, and I could be mistaken for a correlationist myself in ontology--though I am not quite willing to concede this; but *my own* views are always in flux). <br /><br />As for Nietzsche.... Harman doesn't address N. much in Guerrilla Metaphysics, but his central insight comes from N's self-appointed interpreter Heidegger. This (and I should say I found this quite simply a *beautiful* piece of philosophy when I read it, recognizing it with a sense of "of course!", the way Emerson says we recognize our own rejected thoughts), is a certain reading of the zu- and vorhanden in the famous hammer-episode in Being and Time. Harman says (I think) that just as the hammer, when it breaks in our hand, is revealed as a mute and mysterious something (think Sartre's tree root in 'Nausea,' maybe, but without the nausea, and, importantly, as a *specific* something and not just a slippery protoplasm), so *any two* (or more) objects are always 'retreating' from one another, so far as their *being* is concerned. Objects always appear to each other merely by sending little glimmers, as if from the bottom of sea; they *never* act upon each other directly. To use one of Harman's favorite images, the fire "acts upon" a single aspect of the cotton (its flamability), and cotton encounters only a single aspect of flame. Beyond this glancing, tangential reltationship, fire remains 'unknown' to cotton and likewise vice-versa. <br /><br />That is, if I am fire, I only ever encounter a 'phenomenal' cotton--even though it is the *real* cotton that is burned! Of course, the obvious question arises, if real objects never touch, how does any encounter *ever* happen? To answer this question Harman invokes the old chestnut Occasionalism, a la (e.g.) Malebranche. So as to your question-- what about Nietzsche?-- it would be quite interesting to ask about vicarious causation as the Will to Power.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-56955174180080068542010-01-16T15:14:50.411-08:002010-01-16T15:14:50.411-08:00That we are not into it is 'our' fault. Yo...That we are not into it is 'our' fault. You do make this all very interesting for me! You know that I am a Universalist (a small 'u' universalist; that is, any Universalism is better than no Universalism) and as such, a metaphysical monism could be quite appealing to me.<br /><br />Of course, it would be a monism of 'difference' and becoming...<br /><br />Regarding Kant, my real commitments are to the difference between human types, not to the phenomena-noumena distinction. If this were not the case I would consider Cosmology (and not, as I do, Psychology) the 'Queen of the Sciences'. But you know, of course, that I think Cosmology irrelevant to the City. (Only the 'City' has 'Rulers'!) <br /><br />Human Finitude and lack of Knowledge will always be the Real foundation of the City, of any City...<br />And, in all Reality, the City is our greatest concern.<br /><br />Thus “Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity”; but this sort of speculation (as Plato, Averroes, Kant and Nietzsche knew) must be irrelevant to (and hidden from) the City! I especially like, btw, the notion of Schelling as (something of) a Platonist. I will try to get my hands on that book.<br /><br />Now, how does Speculative Realism differ from Nietzsche's privileging of Becoming over Being? (Or, for that matter, from Bergson or Whitehead?)<br /><br />JoeJoe Pomonomohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15799366948466532024noreply@blogger.com