Archives mensuelles : mars 2016

In a very interesting interview (“Pour une ethnographie des modernes”) published in 2008 Bruno Latour clarifies his pronouncements on religion. In reply to a question on the limits of the « ethnographic method » that he used in his studies of science … Lire la suite →

Both Badiou and Latour observe that religion as « truth procedure » (Badiou) or as « mode of veridiction » (Latour) is dead in the society at large. Therefore I do not think that it should enter into the ontological description of our modernity. … Lire la suite →

It follows from Badiou’s concept of death, as explored in the previous post, that we human subjects are not under the régime of « being toward death », we are not mortals (as opposed to the gods), as Heidegger calls us, as … Lire la suite →

It is well-known that Badiou’s philosophical system has been elaborated in a constant dialogue with, and struggle against, Heidegger’s philosophy. A very interesting aspect of this confrontation is to be found in Badiou’s proposition of what he considers to be … Lire la suite →

This is a question I have often asked myself, and I have given several replies on this blog. The important thing for me is that each time I write I achieve a greater level of generality. Behind my most recent … Lire la suite →

Some people (including Pete Wolfendale himself) have protested about a seemingly unfair paragraph in my review of his book. I have now rewritten that passage, and will include it in a future revision of my review. I would like to … Lire la suite →

« Hyper-philosophy » is what Harman is doing, in Baudrillardian terms, but this also characterises the productions of the other speculative realists. Speculative realism is hyper-realism in its vacuous insistence on a « return » to the real that noone ever left. OOP is … Lire la suite →

Given that Graham Harman’s form of withdrawal-oriented ontology postulates that objects withdraw from relations, his metaphysics can be seen as one particular model of the more general set-theoretic ontology proposed by Badiou in BEING AND EVENT. This is confirmed by … Lire la suite →

Harman’s version of withdrawal-oriented ontology, OOP, is conceptually incoherent and terminolgically confused. In his object-oriented philosophy words do not mean what they seem to. Harman equivocates with the familiar connotations and associations of the word “object” to give the impression … Lire la suite →

For Badiou the « age of the poets », that is to say the age of the aesthetic suture, is over. Philosophy reasserts itself by refusing the conception of Being as lost or withdrawn and by rejecting the consequences of such a … Lire la suite →