Thinking about a way to think through the metaphysical tradition that goes through Levinas and Deleuze in the 20th century, it occurred to me that one can describe their project as a metaphysics without speculation where the sense of totality is fully replaced by an commitment to exteriority and infinity (in the sense Levinas ascribes to Descartes). It is a metaphysics of contact, and not of speculative gestures. Interestingly, if we think of the four possibilities of presence and absence of metaphysics and speculation, the other three quadrants are occupied by metaphysicians like Whitehead but also by Leibniz and Spinoza (the quadrant on Metaphysics with Speculation) as much as the quadrant that rejects both metaphysics and speculation is occupied by the traditional forms of correlationism. Finally, speculation without metaphysics is what Meillassoux want to pursue. The fourth quadrant, metaphysics without speculation, is almost completely absent in the current discussion on metaphysical renaissance and the speculative turn.
Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev
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