I begin today on page 198 and finish at the top of page 201
At this stage we have four objects, the real intention inhabited by a real I and a sensual tree. There is also the real tree outside the intention but it is nonetheless capable of affecting the intention. The sensual tree is never encountered in an essential sense but is “...encrusted with various sorts of noise” (Collapse II, 198). This noise Harman calls black noise and black noise is characterized by being highly structured in perception i.e. such black noise contributes to the making up of a whole sensual object one can encounter rather than some chaotic swirl of formless and changing attributes. There are three varieties of black noise:
1. The sensual tree has essential qualities necessary for the intentional subject to make sense of it as an object.
2. The sensual tree also has accidental features.
3. The relations that the tree has to other objects that also belong to the intention.
Harman thinks there are five relations that occur between sensual objects in this third sense:
(1) Containment: the intentional whole that the real I and the sensual tree inhabit.
(2) Contiguity: sensual objects can lie beside each other and not affect one another although sometimes they can meld together to create a new object. This means that the other objects around the tree can be switched around without distorting the identity of the tree. The identity of the tree is not dependent upon its neighbours: that is the tree is more than its relations.
(3) Sincerity: When one is absorbed in the intention toward the tree the sensual tree is contained in the intentional whole. As a real object I am actually engaged with the tree but the same cannot be said for the sensual tree.
(4) Connection: Although within the intention a real object and a sensual object can interact it is not a connection between real objects. Sensual objects do not interact at all. The intention as such requires real objects to occur meaning that there must be some way real objects interact but it must be indirect and it must be the foundation for the intention. [Harman uses the intentional whole to show that what occurs within the intentional whole cannot explain how real objects interact since real objects do not interact within any intentional whole.] Hence there must be some deeper space prior to the intention comprised of real objects with some affective power but whose affectivity is distributed vicariously: “...a real object is born from the connection of other real objects, through unknown vicarious means” (Collapse II, 200).
(5) No relation at all: At the level of real objects there is no direct contact and generally any contact, even vicariously, is rare between most objects. We can see this through Harman’s example that the oxygen that sustains me comes from the real tree and not from my perception of the sensual tree. Whatever the sensual tree is it is only in so much as it is ‘alive’ within the intention and its relations are only occurring in this sensual mode; also within the intention.
Although Harman has discussed developing upon these relations we have here the five relations that are always at work in the world between objects.
This leads Harman to another list of features (and here we might add a criticism of the listing which seems to be getting unwieldy but hopefully the diagrams will sort that out) this time of causation: causation is vicarious, asymmetrical, and buffered. Causation is vicarious in that no two objects ever come into direct contact – rather they do so via an indirect mediation and this mediation occurs at the sensual level but the mediation occurs “on the interior of some other entity” although this final part I cannot unpack unless the interior here refers to some form of intentional whole or intention (Collapse II, 200). The asymmetrical aspect refers to the earliest insight that at first and interaction is always between a real and sensual object as when the ‘I’ earlier was a real object interacting with a sensual tree. Buffered we also encountered earlier as the somewhat mysterious way in which things do not seem to fuse together meaning that some kind of buffer exists.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Vicarious Causation Part II
This brings me up to page 198 just before Harman introduces the five distinct sorts of relations.
In Husserl there is no realm of real objects. There is only the ideal or phenomenal realm. The objects of the phenomenal realm are not real objects but they are for Harman “objects nonetheless…” (Collapse II, 194). Ideal objects do not have hidden depths in the same sense as real objects. They are encountered directly as affective (in perception or in the intentional act). They induce moods and they sparkle with qualities. They are the objects of perception. Here Harman amalgamates Husserlian ideal objects and Heideggerian real objects into one 'thing' but posits that any object has two faces: its real and its sensual/ideal side. Its real side cannot be confronted directly and is characterized by withdrawal and its ideal side confronts us – draws itself forward as encounter-able. The crucial difference between them is that the real object always withdraws to depths unknowable whereas the ideal object can retain more “possible perceptions” and nonetheless appear as a totality (Collapse II, 194). [On this point Harman is thoroughly Husserlian]. In contrast to the swirling depths of real objects sensuous objects wear their swirling potentiality openly.
Here we enter into Harman’s own metaphysics. For Harman “real objects never touch directly” (Collapse II, 194). Real objects do not touch directly because they belong primarily to a background where relationality is not their proper mode of existence. Whatever real objects are they are not to be defined as things that interact. Rather they are better characterized as things that withdraw. They are precisely the objects that reside ‘behind’ relationality and all specific relations. Since real objects do not interact with the sensual profiles of other real objects, as ideal objects do with one another, then whatever causation they engage in is either unknowable (not Harman’s position) or vicarious (Harman’s position). They must be vicarious because only the ideal or phenomenal realm provides objects with the space of ideality in which their swirling profiles can interact providing the basis for inter-relations. Harman now asks why sensual objects do not meld together in perceptual experience since they occur side by side in perceptual experience. He posits that there must be something between them – a kind of “buffered causation” (Collapse II, 194)
At this point Harman’s thesis is that there is the space of real objects where no causation occurs and the pure space of ideality where causation occurs. Harman reverses the standard view that surface is form and depth is causation such that causation occurs on the surface (ideal realm of sensuous objects) and form resides in the depths (space of real objects). The metaphysical question is how do real objects emerge from out of their formal depths onto the surface into their ideal causal interactions? In a more particular sense how do they manage to do so when they can never interact with other real objects directly?
Harman shifts up a gear or two is the second section of this paper (‘A Jigsaw Puzzle’). Harman argues that for Husserl intentionality is “both one and two” (Collapse II, 197). There is both (1) the “unified relation” (the entire intentional realm broader than myself and the intended ) (2) within this unified relation there remains two distinct objects utterly distinct from one another but both belonging within the unified whole. Harman views the two objects within the unified relation as residing on its interior or as I would personally wager the objects reside in the space of the unified whole (however such intentional wholes are always only chunks that can be broken up).
The ‘I’ is real and the tree is sensual or ideal. In the intentional act the real 'I' is engaging with the sensual profile of the tree and is not, as when it is gazed upon, itself sensual. On the other hand the tree although within an intention does not inhabit the intention as the ‘I’ does (i.e. by engaging a sensual profile). Rather the tree, as a real object, opts out receding behind the relation – being more than the relation. The intentional whole is also real and not sensual since it does not rely on the relation – it would occur regardless of whether objects belonged to it or not. In other words the intentional whole is not defined by its relations making it real and not sensual.
At this point one has the intentional whole which is real, the ‘I’ which is also real and within the intentional whole (‘inside’ it) and the ideal or sensual tree which is also inside. There is also the real true, receding behind the relation, that nonetheless manages to exist outside the relation and manages to “…affect it along avenues still unknown” (Collapse II, 198).
[Here we begin to enter what critics find most problematic in the essay. I hope to post the next part in a few days].
In Husserl there is no realm of real objects. There is only the ideal or phenomenal realm. The objects of the phenomenal realm are not real objects but they are for Harman “objects nonetheless…” (Collapse II, 194). Ideal objects do not have hidden depths in the same sense as real objects. They are encountered directly as affective (in perception or in the intentional act). They induce moods and they sparkle with qualities. They are the objects of perception. Here Harman amalgamates Husserlian ideal objects and Heideggerian real objects into one 'thing' but posits that any object has two faces: its real and its sensual/ideal side. Its real side cannot be confronted directly and is characterized by withdrawal and its ideal side confronts us – draws itself forward as encounter-able. The crucial difference between them is that the real object always withdraws to depths unknowable whereas the ideal object can retain more “possible perceptions” and nonetheless appear as a totality (Collapse II, 194). [On this point Harman is thoroughly Husserlian]. In contrast to the swirling depths of real objects sensuous objects wear their swirling potentiality openly.
Here we enter into Harman’s own metaphysics. For Harman “real objects never touch directly” (Collapse II, 194). Real objects do not touch directly because they belong primarily to a background where relationality is not their proper mode of existence. Whatever real objects are they are not to be defined as things that interact. Rather they are better characterized as things that withdraw. They are precisely the objects that reside ‘behind’ relationality and all specific relations. Since real objects do not interact with the sensual profiles of other real objects, as ideal objects do with one another, then whatever causation they engage in is either unknowable (not Harman’s position) or vicarious (Harman’s position). They must be vicarious because only the ideal or phenomenal realm provides objects with the space of ideality in which their swirling profiles can interact providing the basis for inter-relations. Harman now asks why sensual objects do not meld together in perceptual experience since they occur side by side in perceptual experience. He posits that there must be something between them – a kind of “buffered causation” (Collapse II, 194)
At this point Harman’s thesis is that there is the space of real objects where no causation occurs and the pure space of ideality where causation occurs. Harman reverses the standard view that surface is form and depth is causation such that causation occurs on the surface (ideal realm of sensuous objects) and form resides in the depths (space of real objects). The metaphysical question is how do real objects emerge from out of their formal depths onto the surface into their ideal causal interactions? In a more particular sense how do they manage to do so when they can never interact with other real objects directly?
Harman shifts up a gear or two is the second section of this paper (‘A Jigsaw Puzzle’). Harman argues that for Husserl intentionality is “both one and two” (Collapse II, 197). There is both (1) the “unified relation” (the entire intentional realm broader than myself and the intended ) (2) within this unified relation there remains two distinct objects utterly distinct from one another but both belonging within the unified whole. Harman views the two objects within the unified relation as residing on its interior or as I would personally wager the objects reside in the space of the unified whole (however such intentional wholes are always only chunks that can be broken up).
The ‘I’ is real and the tree is sensual or ideal. In the intentional act the real 'I' is engaging with the sensual profile of the tree and is not, as when it is gazed upon, itself sensual. On the other hand the tree although within an intention does not inhabit the intention as the ‘I’ does (i.e. by engaging a sensual profile). Rather the tree, as a real object, opts out receding behind the relation – being more than the relation. The intentional whole is also real and not sensual since it does not rely on the relation – it would occur regardless of whether objects belonged to it or not. In other words the intentional whole is not defined by its relations making it real and not sensual.
At this point one has the intentional whole which is real, the ‘I’ which is also real and within the intentional whole (‘inside’ it) and the ideal or sensual tree which is also inside. There is also the real true, receding behind the relation, that nonetheless manages to exist outside the relation and manages to “…affect it along avenues still unknown” (Collapse II, 198).
[Here we begin to enter what critics find most problematic in the essay. I hope to post the next part in a few days].
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Witness the sickness
Being ill has a way of making you reflect but mostly it just means too much time spent browsing the internet for articles that might pass ten minutes. At least I have the internet. Being sick pre-internet must have really sucked.
So onto business (insert ideological disavowal critique here):
So my illness has meant that Part Two of the Vicarious Causation reading will be deferred a day or two.
Tammy Lu was kind enough to allow Speculations to use one of her pieces inspired by Harman's Prince of Networks.
Anthem gives a nice overview of Speculations over at their blog.
I'm going to add a bunch of new blogs to the blog roll since I've not updated it in quite some time. I'll be adding hypertiling, Avoiding the Void, deontologistics, Complete Lies, and Philosophy in a Time of Error. There are a bunch of others I could add but the blog roll is starting to look unwieldy.
The Speculations CFP should be going out in a few days too.
So onto business (insert ideological disavowal critique here):
So my illness has meant that Part Two of the Vicarious Causation reading will be deferred a day or two.
Tammy Lu was kind enough to allow Speculations to use one of her pieces inspired by Harman's Prince of Networks.
Anthem gives a nice overview of Speculations over at their blog.
I'm going to add a bunch of new blogs to the blog roll since I've not updated it in quite some time. I'll be adding hypertiling, Avoiding the Void, deontologistics, Complete Lies, and Philosophy in a Time of Error. There are a bunch of others I could add but the blog roll is starting to look unwieldy.
The Speculations CFP should be going out in a few days too.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Vicarious Caustion Part I
With all the commotion going on about Graham's essay On Vicarious Causation I figured I'd take a fresh look.
I'm convinced at least part of the confusion rests with Harman's phenomenological background [I think in order to understand Harman's metaphysics one also needs to understand his motivations and these are tied to an overcoming of the overcoming-of-metaphysics in Heidegger]. Anyway it's a good essay and a nicely old-school metaphysical approach. Nonetheless for those wavering on Harman take the time to read more than this essay. It's a work-in-progress and Harman has talked on his blog about the missing elements to the theory of causation outlined in this essay.
My reading of Harman is inflected somewhat by a spatial emphasis being that my own dissertation is on space. I think Harman provides us with a nice way to think about the space of real objects.
In his essay on causation Harman begins by talking about the space of real objects – a thoroughly metaphysical project that draws on Husserl and Heidegger. Whereas there is a case to be made for Harman as a neo-Heideggerian in Tool-Being the same cannot be said of his development after Guerrilla Metaphysics [We might cheekily call this Harman's Kehre!]Nonetheless he draws heavily in the beginning on both Husserl and Heidegger. In Husserl Harman locates ideal objects and calls them sensuous objects for reasons we will come to see later. In Heidegger Harman finds real objects albeit real objects glimpsed through Heidegger’s tool-analysis but absent in a sense from Heidegger’s own concerns. For Harman Heidegger shows that the theoretical approach to objects is derivative from our practical concern with them but Heidegger overlooks that the objects of practical concern are not therefore illuminated in their proper depths.
Heidegger does restore to objects a certain practicality but this is not the same as grasping what objects are 'fully'. Someone engaged in practical concern with an object is just as much in the dark about the object, metaphysically, as the scientist: “We distort when we see, and distort when we use” (Collapse II, 193). The essence of the object is not fully explicated in practical concern setting Harman in direct contradiction with Heidegger’s fundamental thesis regarding objects.
At this point one might say that Harman is simply reiterating a transcendental point about the radical unknowability of objects. Yet Harman extends this unknowability to object-object interactions. In much the same way that a human cannot exhaust the possibilities of an object so too objects cannot exhaust the possibilities of other objects. To say that they do would be to state that relationality is the primary way in which things are unfolded. All relations have a distortive influence not only human relations. In this move Harman radicalizes Heidegger’s ‘readiness-to-hand’. Readiness-to-hand is not to grasp something thematically as useful nor is it that things are things in so much as they are useful. It also means, and at this point it is unclear whether Harman sees this in a twofold sense, that objects have hidden depths that other objects require, necessarily, in order to ‘come about’. Yet this reliance can never completely exhaust these depths. Objects move constantly, in an almost Hegelian sense, like a carousel of possibilities that never ends.
For Harman the ‘breakdown’ that exposes the referential totality is not simply the illumination of the world as an interconnected concernful place but the revelation that objects have depths no human engagement can plumb. The nothingness at the heart of Dasein is shown to be a fundamental feature of existence as such cutting through the anthropocentric baggage of Heidegger’s existential analytic. In Harman’s sense objects are more than their relations but this excess is a withdrawal to somewhere – a depth to objects that must be explored. The background of Heidegger’s referential totality is shown to be limited or only part of the picture. A further background exists, a Latourian ‘plasma,’ consisting of objects shading into momentary contact with other objects and humans before flitting back into the background. Harman now shifts the emphasis to Husserl and more specifically back to the phenomenal realm or “the space of purest ideality” (Collapse II, 194).
I'm convinced at least part of the confusion rests with Harman's phenomenological background [I think in order to understand Harman's metaphysics one also needs to understand his motivations and these are tied to an overcoming of the overcoming-of-metaphysics in Heidegger]. Anyway it's a good essay and a nicely old-school metaphysical approach. Nonetheless for those wavering on Harman take the time to read more than this essay. It's a work-in-progress and Harman has talked on his blog about the missing elements to the theory of causation outlined in this essay.
My reading of Harman is inflected somewhat by a spatial emphasis being that my own dissertation is on space. I think Harman provides us with a nice way to think about the space of real objects.
In his essay on causation Harman begins by talking about the space of real objects – a thoroughly metaphysical project that draws on Husserl and Heidegger. Whereas there is a case to be made for Harman as a neo-Heideggerian in Tool-Being the same cannot be said of his development after Guerrilla Metaphysics [We might cheekily call this Harman's Kehre!]Nonetheless he draws heavily in the beginning on both Husserl and Heidegger. In Husserl Harman locates ideal objects and calls them sensuous objects for reasons we will come to see later. In Heidegger Harman finds real objects albeit real objects glimpsed through Heidegger’s tool-analysis but absent in a sense from Heidegger’s own concerns. For Harman Heidegger shows that the theoretical approach to objects is derivative from our practical concern with them but Heidegger overlooks that the objects of practical concern are not therefore illuminated in their proper depths.
Heidegger does restore to objects a certain practicality but this is not the same as grasping what objects are 'fully'. Someone engaged in practical concern with an object is just as much in the dark about the object, metaphysically, as the scientist: “We distort when we see, and distort when we use” (Collapse II, 193). The essence of the object is not fully explicated in practical concern setting Harman in direct contradiction with Heidegger’s fundamental thesis regarding objects.
At this point one might say that Harman is simply reiterating a transcendental point about the radical unknowability of objects. Yet Harman extends this unknowability to object-object interactions. In much the same way that a human cannot exhaust the possibilities of an object so too objects cannot exhaust the possibilities of other objects. To say that they do would be to state that relationality is the primary way in which things are unfolded. All relations have a distortive influence not only human relations. In this move Harman radicalizes Heidegger’s ‘readiness-to-hand’. Readiness-to-hand is not to grasp something thematically as useful nor is it that things are things in so much as they are useful. It also means, and at this point it is unclear whether Harman sees this in a twofold sense, that objects have hidden depths that other objects require, necessarily, in order to ‘come about’. Yet this reliance can never completely exhaust these depths. Objects move constantly, in an almost Hegelian sense, like a carousel of possibilities that never ends.
For Harman the ‘breakdown’ that exposes the referential totality is not simply the illumination of the world as an interconnected concernful place but the revelation that objects have depths no human engagement can plumb. The nothingness at the heart of Dasein is shown to be a fundamental feature of existence as such cutting through the anthropocentric baggage of Heidegger’s existential analytic. In Harman’s sense objects are more than their relations but this excess is a withdrawal to somewhere – a depth to objects that must be explored. The background of Heidegger’s referential totality is shown to be limited or only part of the picture. A further background exists, a Latourian ‘plasma,’ consisting of objects shading into momentary contact with other objects and humans before flitting back into the background. Harman now shifts the emphasis to Husserl and more specifically back to the phenomenal realm or “the space of purest ideality” (Collapse II, 194).
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Perverse Discussion
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Speculations gets styled
Speculations gets some style. This picture dosen't do it justice so click on the picture for the full effect. Thanks to Asher Kay for putting the logo together.
Causation Commotion
Some good posts on vicarious causation here, here and here. This is good timing. Harman was in danger of being forever considered a ponzai-selling-orientalist-capitalist-careerist.
What strikes me about the current bout of critiques is that they tend to be:
* highly personal
* somewhat random (orientalism...what next?)
* aggressive.
I don't think the final element is such a bad thing. I'm all for the promised attempts to 'destroy' OOP but one should not assume this has been accomplished. Is this not precisely what Harman is being critiqued for...his tactics of deferral? If SR or OOP are mocked as some kind of phantom internet phenomenon then what precisely are the critiques? Do they too not occur on blogs and are such papers not being promised for some future date? I don't think Harman has ever stated his work is not in progress. To call his theory of causation incoherent is patently unfair at this point. Of course what stands out in Michael's post is that although it is fairly or even highly critical of Harman's position it does not dismiss it crudely or unfairly. He lets it breathe and then proceeds to point out its flaws.
I've also got to wonder how one can consider OOP as a careerist move? If anything aligning oneself with such a small, obscure movement will have little or no effect. I really enjoy reading speculative realist stuff but I'm pretty much alone in that here in Ireland and none of the lecturers here have a clue who I'm talking about when I mention its adherents. That's why I have the Heidegger and traditional German thinking as my mainstay. Someone raised the question as to why I wanted to write on phenomenology and object oriented ontology. Well keep in mind what comes first in that list: phenomenology. I'm a phenomenologist first but I have a side interest in OOP and OOP can be seen as fulfilling a forgotten realist tradition in phenomenology. In that sense I'm pretty traditional and I'm not sure I'd make a good object oriented ontologist. Nonetheless it's one of the few movements to spark my mind in a long time and as Jon Cogburn noted whatever one thinks of Levi and Graham they have generated a hell of a lot of discussion for us all.
I also think people are incorrect to state that Harman's work is basically a mish-mash of Husserl and Heidegger. Tool-Being is a well-argued book but it's not really a book on Heidegger (in the same way Prince of Networks is only sort of about Latour). Although Harman notes in a kind of rhetorically flush that Heidegger can be reduced to one idea (and let us remember Heidegger considered all thinkers to have one great theme) that's not what happens in Tool-Being. Harman sort of sets anchor in the tool-analysis and emphasizes tool-being but he also addresses how Heidegger reworks this insight in a huge number of ways. Even if the basis for the existential analytic and the Fourfold are the same they produce different insights. Variation on a theme. It's not as if Harman just points out that all things swing between Vor- and Zuhandenheit and end by twisting it about so that tools are given a new depth.
My own personal interpretation is rather Heideggerian when it comes to Harman. I see his early work (Tool-Being and Guerrilla Metaphysics) as heading in a phenomenologically realist direction. In Heidegger-speak I think Harman takes up Stiegler's call to do more metaphysics: facing up to technology (the danger) and hopefully passing through metaphysics to a renewed relationship with being. In this sense Harman comes closest to Heidegger's *borrowed from Eckhart* concept of Gelassenheit or letting-be. This is precisely what I argue in a paper I'm working on and a paper I'm not sure how Harman will react to. In this early sense Harman is a neo-Heideggerian and in a weird way more Husserlian then Heideggerian. On the other hand he has his own Kehre in the unpublished essays and in Prince of Networks (and in the glimpses to what comes next on his blog). Here I find it hard to follow what is going on (my head scratching moment!) but I recognize that whatever is going on is going on i.e. not fleshed out yet. It is hard to tell where Harman is going but Michael's post is a good example of how to deal with a work in progress.
In Heidegger's words ways not works.
My favourite thinker, and this might surprise people, is not Heidegger but Gadamer. It's not just that Gadamer is a nicer person than Heidegger although that counts but that in Gadamer dialogue is put to the forefront. In his interviews Gadamer is always even-handed and even with thinkers he dislikes he runs through their thought in a fair manner before offering up what he finds distasteful. As an example of how to act ethically on the personal level there is no better mentor than Gadamer. I fear that the internet may be eroding that a little. Some of the things one reads about people online are shocking and I cannot help but wonder whether one would say these things in a one on one interaction. My own approach is to do follow a simple rule: if you couldn't say what you think to the person's face then why would you publish it anonymously?
What strikes me about the current bout of critiques is that they tend to be:
* highly personal
* somewhat random (orientalism...what next?)
* aggressive.
I don't think the final element is such a bad thing. I'm all for the promised attempts to 'destroy' OOP but one should not assume this has been accomplished. Is this not precisely what Harman is being critiqued for...his tactics of deferral? If SR or OOP are mocked as some kind of phantom internet phenomenon then what precisely are the critiques? Do they too not occur on blogs and are such papers not being promised for some future date? I don't think Harman has ever stated his work is not in progress. To call his theory of causation incoherent is patently unfair at this point. Of course what stands out in Michael's post is that although it is fairly or even highly critical of Harman's position it does not dismiss it crudely or unfairly. He lets it breathe and then proceeds to point out its flaws.
I've also got to wonder how one can consider OOP as a careerist move? If anything aligning oneself with such a small, obscure movement will have little or no effect. I really enjoy reading speculative realist stuff but I'm pretty much alone in that here in Ireland and none of the lecturers here have a clue who I'm talking about when I mention its adherents. That's why I have the Heidegger and traditional German thinking as my mainstay. Someone raised the question as to why I wanted to write on phenomenology and object oriented ontology. Well keep in mind what comes first in that list: phenomenology. I'm a phenomenologist first but I have a side interest in OOP and OOP can be seen as fulfilling a forgotten realist tradition in phenomenology. In that sense I'm pretty traditional and I'm not sure I'd make a good object oriented ontologist. Nonetheless it's one of the few movements to spark my mind in a long time and as Jon Cogburn noted whatever one thinks of Levi and Graham they have generated a hell of a lot of discussion for us all.
I also think people are incorrect to state that Harman's work is basically a mish-mash of Husserl and Heidegger. Tool-Being is a well-argued book but it's not really a book on Heidegger (in the same way Prince of Networks is only sort of about Latour). Although Harman notes in a kind of rhetorically flush that Heidegger can be reduced to one idea (and let us remember Heidegger considered all thinkers to have one great theme) that's not what happens in Tool-Being. Harman sort of sets anchor in the tool-analysis and emphasizes tool-being but he also addresses how Heidegger reworks this insight in a huge number of ways. Even if the basis for the existential analytic and the Fourfold are the same they produce different insights. Variation on a theme. It's not as if Harman just points out that all things swing between Vor- and Zuhandenheit and end by twisting it about so that tools are given a new depth.
My own personal interpretation is rather Heideggerian when it comes to Harman. I see his early work (Tool-Being and Guerrilla Metaphysics) as heading in a phenomenologically realist direction. In Heidegger-speak I think Harman takes up Stiegler's call to do more metaphysics: facing up to technology (the danger) and hopefully passing through metaphysics to a renewed relationship with being. In this sense Harman comes closest to Heidegger's *borrowed from Eckhart* concept of Gelassenheit or letting-be. This is precisely what I argue in a paper I'm working on and a paper I'm not sure how Harman will react to. In this early sense Harman is a neo-Heideggerian and in a weird way more Husserlian then Heideggerian. On the other hand he has his own Kehre in the unpublished essays and in Prince of Networks (and in the glimpses to what comes next on his blog). Here I find it hard to follow what is going on (my head scratching moment!) but I recognize that whatever is going on is going on i.e. not fleshed out yet. It is hard to tell where Harman is going but Michael's post is a good example of how to deal with a work in progress.
In Heidegger's words ways not works.
My favourite thinker, and this might surprise people, is not Heidegger but Gadamer. It's not just that Gadamer is a nicer person than Heidegger although that counts but that in Gadamer dialogue is put to the forefront. In his interviews Gadamer is always even-handed and even with thinkers he dislikes he runs through their thought in a fair manner before offering up what he finds distasteful. As an example of how to act ethically on the personal level there is no better mentor than Gadamer. I fear that the internet may be eroding that a little. Some of the things one reads about people online are shocking and I cannot help but wonder whether one would say these things in a one on one interaction. My own approach is to do follow a simple rule: if you couldn't say what you think to the person's face then why would you publish it anonymously?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Time Out
Tomorrow I go back to trying to finish a chapter for my dissertation so posts will be light again. Please note that comments are now moderated ever since I started to receive spambot posts. I don't refuse posts from readers so it just means it'll take a day or two before I noticed the posts. If anyone wants to contact me re: Speculations feel free to e-mail me.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
I've always suspected that...
...everyone thinks OOP is a closet capitalism. Of course personally I think the rest of you are just stuffy old Marxists. ;)
Related: Researchers must take a stand now or be judged and rewarded as salesmen
Related: Researchers must take a stand now or be judged and rewarded as salesmen
Terror and Territory
People who know me personally will know that my favourite book on Heidegger to be published in the last few years is Stuart Elden's Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language, and the Politics of Calculation. If you want to find a decent antidote to the latest Heidegger as Nazi crisis then do check it out. You can find my review of Elden's book here: The Rhetorical Dimension in Heidegger.
The point of this post is that Elden has just published a new book Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty. I cannot recommend Elden's work enough and he manages to spot things that philosophers tend to overlook without sacrificing philosophical rigour; in fact I'm almost certain he is just pretending to be a geographer in order to embarrass us into working harder!
The point of this post is that Elden has just published a new book Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty. I cannot recommend Elden's work enough and he manages to spot things that philosophers tend to overlook without sacrificing philosophical rigour; in fact I'm almost certain he is just pretending to be a geographer in order to embarrass us into working harder!
Via enowning
A couple of interesting links via enowning.
Germany: Heidegger, Being, and Place
I never thought to write an article on my own experience of visiting the hut. You can find my own pictures here. I found the experience a little bit strange and I was certainly in a different state of mind then working on the later Heidegger (and certainly at that point a Heideggerian through and through) and deep ecology. I'm not sure how I'd feel about visiting it again although I intend to at some point.
The second link is Thomas Sheehan's Heidegger at Stanford page. I'm still waiting for Sheehan to write a new translation of Being and Time. If anyone can outdo the 1962 edition it's Sheehan.
Germany: Heidegger, Being, and Place
I never thought to write an article on my own experience of visiting the hut. You can find my own pictures here. I found the experience a little bit strange and I was certainly in a different state of mind then working on the later Heidegger (and certainly at that point a Heideggerian through and through) and deep ecology. I'm not sure how I'd feel about visiting it again although I intend to at some point.
The second link is Thomas Sheehan's Heidegger at Stanford page. I'm still waiting for Sheehan to write a new translation of Being and Time. If anyone can outdo the 1962 edition it's Sheehan.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
A nice Hegel quote
It has taken me some thing to work out why I like Hegel and it should have been obvious from the start. This about sums it up:
''It is easier to find a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their proper import and value.'' - Hegel
In philosophy the torrent of negativity can sometimes be blinding. Everything sucks and every thinker is deficient for not constantly highlighting how much everything sucks. Tearing down walls, untying knots and finding cracks but leaving the ladders at home...don't want to do any climbing. Better to throw rocks at the windows.
''It shows an excessive tenderness for the world to take contradiction from it and transfer the contradiction to reason, where it is allowed to remain unresolved.'' - Hegel
I love the idea contained here: thinking away the troubles of the world. Even perhaps, in a subtle sense, carrying the burden for the world. As strange as the 'light of reason' is in pre-critical philosophy there is something equally odd about the 'shimmer' of reason one finds in German idealism - reason as empty and that which is not a thing. Heidegger loves this notion and is always happy to give Schelling a nod from time to time but only in relation to this image (GA 29/30 relies on it toward the end). Žižek is the contemporary thinker on this score (I think here Hegel's words are applicable directly to Husserlian phenomenology).
With phenomenology the approach is perhaps a little simpler. One approaches not 'the world' but things and a side benefit of allowing the thing to shimmer back (or in Heidegger land shine forth) is that the phenomena of world might come along with it. Or in Heidegger's case one might see being out of the corner of their eye. Like staring at the sun one needs to approach being indirectly via anxiety, breakdown or in language but precisely by taking on the contradictions (burdens) of language.
In this sense what makes Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger such interesting thinkers is that they all have definite goals. They have something in mind and are willing to being drowned in contradiction to get even the feeling of that shimmer back.
''It is easier to find a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their proper import and value.'' - Hegel
In philosophy the torrent of negativity can sometimes be blinding. Everything sucks and every thinker is deficient for not constantly highlighting how much everything sucks. Tearing down walls, untying knots and finding cracks but leaving the ladders at home...don't want to do any climbing. Better to throw rocks at the windows.
''It shows an excessive tenderness for the world to take contradiction from it and transfer the contradiction to reason, where it is allowed to remain unresolved.'' - Hegel
I love the idea contained here: thinking away the troubles of the world. Even perhaps, in a subtle sense, carrying the burden for the world. As strange as the 'light of reason' is in pre-critical philosophy there is something equally odd about the 'shimmer' of reason one finds in German idealism - reason as empty and that which is not a thing. Heidegger loves this notion and is always happy to give Schelling a nod from time to time but only in relation to this image (GA 29/30 relies on it toward the end). Žižek is the contemporary thinker on this score (I think here Hegel's words are applicable directly to Husserlian phenomenology).
With phenomenology the approach is perhaps a little simpler. One approaches not 'the world' but things and a side benefit of allowing the thing to shimmer back (or in Heidegger land shine forth) is that the phenomena of world might come along with it. Or in Heidegger's case one might see being out of the corner of their eye. Like staring at the sun one needs to approach being indirectly via anxiety, breakdown or in language but precisely by taking on the contradictions (burdens) of language.
In this sense what makes Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger such interesting thinkers is that they all have definite goals. They have something in mind and are willing to being drowned in contradiction to get even the feeling of that shimmer back.
Object Oriented Ontology Conference
Well I am happy to see that there will finally be an object oriented ontology conference as announced by Graham in this post.
Of course I'm pretty excited about this as I've been following OOO for some time now and although I don't consider myself an OOO as such that is mostly because I have contributed nothing to the movement. I find it difficult to know how one would write on OOO at this stage especially as a graduate student. I think that will change with both Graham's forthcoming publications, Levi's book, and of course the OOO sections in The Speculative Turn. Readers will also note that I've been working on an OOO journal but as I'm finding out journals take a long time to put together. That being said things should start picking up there in the coming months. I also really want to submit a paper to this conference too. Now since 'Real Objects or Material Subjects' takes place in March and the OOO conference takes place in April that might make life a bit difficult financially but I hope to make it to at least one.
That being said I'm actually glad the OOO conference will take place in America since, as Graham notes, its a distinctly American movement at this stage. I'm not sure how many fellow graduate students consider themselves to be OOO but I think most sympathetic people tend to be Americans (even if they are currently studying in Europe). I had plotted (in my head mostly) to submit a paper for the Real Objects conference defending OOO against the charge of anti-humanism but it seems that this topic is somewhat more likely to find a better defense elsewhere...ditto for the politics aspect. So I'd been putting a proposal together on a simple OOO reading i.e. an analysis along object oriented lines a la early Husserl because at this stage we should be moving toward positive manifestations of OOO rather than a total focus on defense or indeed critique of other positions. The danger is that my own reading of OOO is phenomenologically inflected and I do see something of a neo-Heideggerian in Harman (not in a negative way but someone who pushes through Heidegger into new terrain which I suspect Heidegger would have felt happier with than the hero worship of the 'Heideggerians').
Anyway I suppose having too many choices is never a bad thing and at this stage I think I have a thing or two to say about my *own* hopes for OOO. I'm not sure whether Graham, Levi and Ian would be terribly interested in what grad students have to say about OOO or whether a paper that draws out OOO neo-Heideggerian roots would be considered a step backwards or a helpful nod since if OOO can be called anything it can be called a non-traditional movement rearranging the scene that came before it.
Of course I'm pretty excited about this as I've been following OOO for some time now and although I don't consider myself an OOO as such that is mostly because I have contributed nothing to the movement. I find it difficult to know how one would write on OOO at this stage especially as a graduate student. I think that will change with both Graham's forthcoming publications, Levi's book, and of course the OOO sections in The Speculative Turn. Readers will also note that I've been working on an OOO journal but as I'm finding out journals take a long time to put together. That being said things should start picking up there in the coming months. I also really want to submit a paper to this conference too. Now since 'Real Objects or Material Subjects' takes place in March and the OOO conference takes place in April that might make life a bit difficult financially but I hope to make it to at least one.
That being said I'm actually glad the OOO conference will take place in America since, as Graham notes, its a distinctly American movement at this stage. I'm not sure how many fellow graduate students consider themselves to be OOO but I think most sympathetic people tend to be Americans (even if they are currently studying in Europe). I had plotted (in my head mostly) to submit a paper for the Real Objects conference defending OOO against the charge of anti-humanism but it seems that this topic is somewhat more likely to find a better defense elsewhere...ditto for the politics aspect. So I'd been putting a proposal together on a simple OOO reading i.e. an analysis along object oriented lines a la early Husserl because at this stage we should be moving toward positive manifestations of OOO rather than a total focus on defense or indeed critique of other positions. The danger is that my own reading of OOO is phenomenologically inflected and I do see something of a neo-Heideggerian in Harman (not in a negative way but someone who pushes through Heidegger into new terrain which I suspect Heidegger would have felt happier with than the hero worship of the 'Heideggerians').
Anyway I suppose having too many choices is never a bad thing and at this stage I think I have a thing or two to say about my *own* hopes for OOO. I'm not sure whether Graham, Levi and Ian would be terribly interested in what grad students have to say about OOO or whether a paper that draws out OOO neo-Heideggerian roots would be considered a step backwards or a helpful nod since if OOO can be called anything it can be called a non-traditional movement rearranging the scene that came before it.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Politics and Ontology
Got to agree with Nick here:
I have to admit that I’m always surprised at how many people disagree with my claim that reality exists independently of politics. It seems like such an obvious statement to me. Which is not to say that they can’t be related in particular cases, but that the study of ontology can be done without a regard for politics, and vice versa.
If a tree fall in the woods and nobody is around to hear it is it political? Mein gott let us have our metaphysics.
I have to admit that I’m always surprised at how many people disagree with my claim that reality exists independently of politics. It seems like such an obvious statement to me. Which is not to say that they can’t be related in particular cases, but that the study of ontology can be done without a regard for politics, and vice versa.
If a tree fall in the woods and nobody is around to hear it is it political? Mein gott let us have our metaphysics.
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