Skip to main content

The absolute other of Meillassoux

Been discussing Violence et Métaphysique in the anarchai research group these weeks, I've been growingly convinced that Levinas major (and radical) break with Husserl's phenomenology is somehow recapitulated in Meillassoux's twin rejection of correlationism and subjectalism. Derrida is hard on Levinas when he brings in the notion of alter ego such as it appears in the fifth Cartesian Meditation. Now, that is particularly interesting for me because the fifth Meditation is the official address of Husserl's monadology. He there presents subjects as monads intentionally connected in a way that each monad reaches the others and brings them in while maintaining them away - they are heard because they are egos, they are away because they are alter. An intentional act brings the intended other in by making it possible for the subject to register in thinking the presence of the other. The monadological relation makes up for a structure of intersubjectivity - the other appears to me as an other which is intelligible to me as another me. Then Derrida goes: this is the best one can possibly require from a structure of intersubjectivity - the other as another me; nothing could possibly be less violent than that and yet making sure that intelligibility is made of the other (and the philosophical discourse on the other is not cracked open). Yet, Levinas is deeply unhappy with Husserl's alter ego - as he would be, as it were, with any monadological approach whatsoever. He thinks that considering the other as another me is already closing oneself up to the other - and making an ontological claim that cannot bring in anything but a violent staring point. It is a way to make my intelligibility rule over what should come first, the alterarchy - the command coming from the other. The Husserlian alter ego is just not enough to bring in an opening to an absolute other - it is, in a sense, tainted with a correlation, with my own matrix of intelligibility. Derrida sees the drama: it is not enough and yet it has to be enough. By insisting on the first part, Levinas cracks open the philosophical discourse on the other. Derrida makes it even clearer: without something like a Husserlian monadology, violence against the other has no victim, as the other is not clearly an ego that can be victim of violence (or alternatively, violence has no perpetrator, from the point of view of the other). Cracking open the philosophical discourse on the other is therefore incoherent and arguably dangerously close of being unintelligible, Derrida diagnoses, and yet, he registers, Levinas goes precisely this way. And in this he is radical: intelligibility is not something one should sacrifice ethics for. He breaks therefore with the correlation intelligibility (and with the subjectalism of Husserl) by insisting on an infinite, on an absolute opening, on an absolute other.

Now, Meillassoux seems to be doing a similar move. It is not sufficient to make my intelligibility (or any one's intelligibility) the measure of all things - mediation, or correlation, cannot be made absolute because the price to pay is to taint the absolute character of the other. If correlation is absolute, the other can no longer be presented in its absolute character. To break with subjectalism could be to crack open philosophical discourse about the world, but this is the radical move: get away from any promise to make the world intelligible so that its character of absolute other can appear. Philosophical discourse is, in both cases, the eventual casualty.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

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...
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...
Post a Comment
Read more