Political correctness is spreading to thought itself and deep into history. In this connection, the hatred for old white men is now concentrated on old wise men. This is surely the most extreme form of cultural revolution since Mao. Steadfast, the guardians of virtue replace thinking with intolerance and self-righteousness. The victim status renders with its pathos of indignation any argumentation superfluous.
As though the past were still unfinished, history is being rewritten. Children’s books are being expurgated or censored; a gender-sensitive Bible frees God of the stain of being a father; streets are being renamed, holidays corrected, and statues toppled.The fact that it is now Kant, philosopher of the Enlightenment, who has fallen victim to the tribunalizers, should make it clear to everyone that the fate of occidental rationalism is at stake here. One can put Kant up “to debate,” without reading him. For reading Kant is very exacting—and this is something that even with the best of intentions can be avoided. After all, the tribunalization of the past has an important alleviating effect. A label is stuck to a great mind, and one no longer needs to deal with him. “Putting up for debate” replaces studying.
Updated Syllabus can be found in the course folder HERE, along with most of the readings/texts required for the class. I'm planning to post the lectures on my YouTube channel if I can realistically be consistent in recording them.
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| View from driver's seat while traveling from Dubuque, Iowa to Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, Fall 2011. Internet thugs thought that they had killed me - but some "objects" never die. |
I haven't spoken to Quentin since 2014 (see HERE) when we were attempting to bring him over for our Philadelphia Summer School in Continental Philosophy, which resulted for me a chapter in THIS book (also much thanks is due to one Ray Brassier for making much of that and several opportunities possible). You can hear my opening remarks from that summer school HERE. John Caputo wound up graciously delivering the seminars, which you can download HERE. He discusses Meillassoux quite abit and in depth.
Perusing through After Nature blog one finds many, many posts covering Meillassoux. Some of which will appear in the (hopefully, one day) forthcoming Speculative Naturalism edited and polished into essays. This year I have a book review and two chapters in edited books to finish first though - so Speculative Naturalism keeps getting pushed back, and has been for at least three years now. In any case, you might find some of the following interesting, followed by some interesting quotes.
Some quotes:
"The authentic tradition of immanence resides in the Platonic divine, and in the gods of Spinoza and Hegel, not in the 'philosophical atheism' of Heidegger."
- Quentin Meillassoux - The Divine Inexistence
"The most underrated thinkers in the history of philosophy are Reinhold, Jacobi, Maimon: the German thinkers who formed the junction between Kant and Fichte. With these philosophers, we draw close to the edge of what would soon become the volcano of German Idealism. It is a volcano that would not have been able to erupt without them, even though Schelling and Hegel esteemed them lightly."
- Quentin Meillassoux
"Speculative realism is an appellation designating in itself nothing important but with which I have become associated. It does not quite correspond to my enterprise since it also comprises the option that I seek to counter."
- Quentin Meillassoux
"Tragic Wave." Here's the band, Drab Majesty with "Too Soon," from the "Demonstration" LP. First some Wikipedia though. Link's below the embedded video.
From Wikipedia:
A new and higher mechane of existence had come into play, the birth of tragic thought."
- Nietzsche, The Dionysian Vision of the World (1870)
