Prome-theism and Meillassoux's inverted Christic Hegelianism

Take a moment to read the following excerpts from Chris Watkin's DIfficult Atheism book.  After summing up the spectral dilemma and M's theory of the fourth world, Watkin makes some interesting (and accurate, I think) observations.

“Unwiling to sacrifice the hope for universal justice, even for the dead, Meillassoux splits the horns of a/theism’s unsatisfying dilemma [either God exists or not] by introducing the position he calls ‘the philosophical divine.’  Like the religious believer, the philosopher believes in God, and can therefore claim as their own religious hope for universal justice; like the atheist, the philosopher denies the existence of God, and so is not saddled with having to charge current injustice to God’s account.”

“Meillassoux’s philosophy, as we have seen, embraces a messianic hope for justice.  Unlike the nihilist, who hopes for justice in another life, the philosopher hopes for immortality in this life (immortality, this time, in the sense of living forever)….But in what sense does the philosopher hope for immortality in this life?....Everything that is logically possible is really possible, including the rebirth of bodies.”

“Meillassoux couches his hope in his teleological narrative of four Worlds…the fourth World, the World of Justice and the world of the rebirth of man, is the world in which humanity acquires immortality, which Meillassoux argues is the only life worthy of the human condition….If there is to be universal justice we must be born again, because only the rebirth of man makes possible universal justice up to and including the injustice of a life snatched away.”

“When it comes to how such a justice will arrive, Meillassoux’s occupation with religious territory is even more pronounced….[A] mediator called variously by Meillassoux the Child of Man, or [son of] God, receives the power to produce the rebirth necessary for justice by the same appearing ex nihilo that brought life from matter (World two) and rational intelligence from life (World three)…..[In this way] we are God’s ancestors and not his creatures.”

“[The stages and institution of a fourth World of Justice] traces for Meillassoux an inverted Christic Hegelianism.  In Hegel’s notion of God in the Science of Logic, the infinity of God requires that He pass into finitude, becoming contingent, limited and incarnate, in order that finitude itself be overcome as the limit of the infinite.  But the inclusion of the finite in the infinite cannot be definitive, because then the infinite would be finite.  The finite must be a moment of the infinite.  The Christ must die, in order to assure the dialectic movement infinite – finite – infinite, or God – man – God.  In this Hegelian conception, contingency is subordinated to the real necessity of the All.  With Meillassoux’s Child of Man we see this process reversed.  Contingency itself is an expression necessity, and rather than finitude being dialectically overcome in the One-All of divine infinity, divinity itself is brought under the one universal condition of contingency in the dialectic of finite – infinite – finite, or man – God – man.  While Meillassoux shares with Hegel the intuition of the Christic character of the rational, the terms are reversed.”

“Meillassoux argues that with this inverted Christic Hegelianism, Man is no longer denigrated, as in religion and atheism alike, but neither is he elevated to a dangerous Promethean pedestal.  Promethean humanism is nothing but the religious vision that man makes of and for himself (promé-théisme or “Prome-theism), an instance of what we are calling imitative atheism that makes an idolatry of the power of man instead of the power of God…..In this, Meillassoux’s ethics structurally bears much in common with a Christianity that looks to Jesus the Son of Man for its ethical paradigm.  To make this comparison is not to threaten Meillassoux’s thought with parasitism, however, for this is precisely his aim.”

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem's "Soustractivism"

Awakening a theory of the "dark event"; inaugurating tragedy.

In Soustractivism there stays the most interesting question of the philosophy from the ontological difference: the difference between Presentation and Representation. Nothing is to be understood from that if the concept of Representation is applied to that which we have trusted to still know about. Soustractivism affects a radical innovation to this old term [ontological difference] and at the same time it stringlenty overwrites all the connotations that could be accepted before it.

Link HERE and HERE (Critical Secret No. 4) 

Why I'm interested: HERE and HERE.

the Matter Of Contradiction

Pete Wolfendale made a mention of this, but of course they've been around for awhile.  Matter of Contradiction has a tumblr up and there are now lots of new vimeo presentations up that might be worth looking at (at least the first and third events of 2011 and 2013).

HT deontologistics, link HERE.  You can also check out Pete's (and others') newish blog on accelerationism HERE.  It's been around for three months or so I think.

Peirce, Meillassoux, and absolute contingency: the case for an ontological fallibilism

Atheology blog has an interesting post up HERE covering Peircean fallibilism.  The post goes into some detail tracing out fallibilism as epistemological doctrine.

The point was hinted, though not explored, as to what the outcome might be when fallibilism is ontologically applied to necessity.  That is, fallibilism not necessarily taken as epistemological doctrine but as ontological fact.

I've often wondered how Peirce's "can-be" possible relates to Meillassouxian virtuality or surcontigency in this precise sense.  By a "can be" possible of course Peirce does not mean "possibility" in its traditional modal meaning of being posed against the "actual."  Rather, it resembles nearly exactly what Meillassoux means by "surcontingent" and virtual.  I think the modal nature of Firstness attests to this, as does its chaotic and creative properties that make for even the creation of time and becoming or for their potential destruction (a "would be" flat-lined ultimate generality of some sort; "death" as Peirce calls it).

I am reminded here for some reason of a comment that Latour made recently:  God is an animal containing all temporalities.   Panentheistically speaking, whatever God is - say process of cosmic development - that process's modes and temporal development constitute fallible theological knowledge, as well as necessary knowledge of contingents.

It seems that epistemologically we can have a knowledge of the absolute ("after finitude"), where in this absolute there is knowledge of a necessity regarding the contingent nature of the process of creation.  This in turn is categorically exposed in terms of fundamental modes that are necessary to the structure of contingency itself.  What's nice is that Peirce divides these modes triadically according to an (onto)logical structure.  I think that Meillassoux does this too, by according a logical principle - that of non-contradiction, which also means the law of identity and excluded middle - to the temporal process of surcontingency.

grounding relations and object dependence

New Essays in Philosophy now available which covers the grounding of relations and object dependence, link HERE.

The idiom leans slightly in the direction of analytic philosophy but is general enough that those interested in process-relational philosophy, including those coming from a continental perspective, could easily follow or dare even use some of the material and arguments presented as ammunition for their own causes.

Zalamea guest editor of new issue of EJPAP

Fernando Zalamea, famed Urbanomic author and Peircean philosopher of mathematics whiz, is among the guest editors for a new issue on creativity published by European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy.

I have my reservations about that journal.  They solicited me for a book review but then denied my review because it wasn't a book review essay (this was never divulged as a requirement, not at least at the time).  So the review ended up being published elsewhere.  It's fair to say that my attitude towards them is, "meh."

This issue in particular looks solid and Zalamea's work is top notch.  Glimpse a nice little table of contents with .pdfs HERE or download the full issue HERE.

preserving our dark skies

I haven't heard of this before but it makes sense (there is a "dark sky" association that lobbies for night sky conservation, see HERE).

Anyway, I found a similar article about preserving dark skies, HERE.  It is worth checking out.  I've left the photo above in a larger size (courtesy of the article) in case readers would like to click on it in order to view it in greater resolution.  It is an example of how darkness and the night sky can be quite beautiful.

fleeing objectual reduction: accelerating speed for the withdrawl from all objectual representation

"There are no objects.  Only speeds and limits to be broken."

"In a world composed of objects there would be no so-called "objects"...[I]n a world of radical pluralism there would be no determinate reality pretenses made for another, no reduction to a singular orientation that claims to speak for another or all others in their singularity...To acknowledge the radical plurality of the world is to release all determinate and finalized epistemological orientations that claim to somehow 'speak for all' others in their own real metaphysical singularity as a totalizing claim upon what is real, for singularity evidences itself.  This is not to say that singularity is somehow relative to perspective; indeed, quite the opposite: another's freedom (of metaphysical singularity) is not to be spoken for by categorically reducing its reality as a plural singular to an item within your "oriented" ontology, your perspective rather than its own which is always plural and always excessive of a singular orientation. A philosophy of freedom and pluralism is just that: boundless and abundant in perspective as much as it is plural in reality."

The following articles speak to speed, to the breaking through of barriers formed by objectual reduction, to going "off screen," to avoiding being scanned and (hash) tagged.  Oppose objectual reduction.  Of course it's not as if P.E.S.T. created this flavor of thinking - they just introduced me to it.  And I love it.

Anyway, these articles evidence some of the ideas that I am thinking about these days.  I've been introduced to a number of things over the past few weeks - several motions of thought that seem to be intertwined.  Whether processual, libertarian, nihilist, or whathaveyou, I am not sure.  When I can concretely make a statement about how to characterize this new appearance of thought - which for me is an overarching motion of thinking rather than a specific "ism" - I'll certainly create a post.

Resist data control and representation.  Flee, withdraw, go off screen, a revolution "for and by the open."

"Escape Velocities" by Alex Williams.

"The Spam of the Earth" by Hito Steyerl

"Imagining a World Set Free of Their Objects" by B. Lozano / Speculative Materialism blog

Interesting e-flux journal (this has been out for awhile) on "Accelerationist Aesthetics," HERE.

pain

Juenger wrote that "pain is like an illness, once we recover we are immune."

See my post HERE.

agony and ecstasy

HT dmf.

the paradox of anti-relational philosophy

The paradox of anti-relational philosophy is that it seems to rely upon social relations for its very existence.  But not all of contagion is a good thing.

After reviewing the book to the left as well as yesterday's linked article concerning the monopoly of Google (which holds true of Facebook and Twitter concerning a monopoly over social networking), it seems that a truly ecological approach to information would go beyond a "cross-platform" approach limiting itself to just two or three main networks.

We shouldn't expect one to succumb to the networks.  That is, just because an idea or figure - an individual - hasn't been subsumed by a network, its identity spread there, its shape digested by the networks' occupants, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.  In fact, because of information proliferation, the hidden or undiscovered takes on an especial integrity if one eludes the networks or voluntarily chooses to disappear from them.

Juenger's "forest fleer" comes to mind, mentioned in Eumeswil.  There is safe haven afterall - what in Juengerian flavor we might call inner emigration.

Maybe the ultimate relation is the net that I myself cast - that is, the relation which one has to "one's own" - one's own future, one's own self and the always becoming pillar of freedom that a self is.  I believe it was Max Stirner who stated that this was not only a pillar of any individual but something of the primal and inescapable relation that defines all individuals (that of self-relation).  This is the most radical form of pluralism available: all individuals are ultimate, but only ultimate because of their mutual freedom and potential for creativity (for good as well as for evil).

Agentialism of contemporary metaphysical guise is really a timeless sort of truth. 

Incidentally, Juenger referred positively to Stirner as "Saint Max."  It is highly plausible that Kierkegaard read Stirner, and we know that Kierkegaard attended Schelling's Berlin lectures which were influenced by Stirner's work.  Juenger captures this "darker" sense of what one is capable of, a sense of self-ownership developed by Stirner.  Schelling saw this kind of agency, that is, freedom understood as an indifferent power which, really, all things possess, as did Juenger, and Stirner, and Kierkegaard in his moments of despair too.