(Penguin, 2018)
According to Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is first and foremost a form of realism. It is thus a counter-idealism. But it's not a materialism; more a weird and intangible metaphysics in which "reality is always radically different from our formulation of it, and is never something we encounter directly in the flesh" [7]. The fact that things withdraw from direct access into ontological darkness is the central principle of OOO.
Harman acknowledges the obvious objection that arises: that when you posit an unknowable reality, there's really nothing you can say about it; for any propositions advanced are ultimately unverifiable. But he doesn't let this objection worry him too much. For hey, philosophy isn't a natural science or an accumulated body of knowledge; it's a love of wisdom, man, and OOO is an attempt to share the love and pass the word along.
As an openly erotic form of aesthetics, OOO is thus heavily reliant upon metaphor to make its case. Or, more accurately, to make itself as alluring as the objects it describes in order to seduce those open to its often provocative - if implausible - ideas. Harman particularly prides himself on the fact that his new theory of everything has emerged as a major influence on individuals in the arts and humanities, "eclipsing the previous influence ... of the prominent French postmodernist thinkers Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze" [8].
And, as if that weren't enough, the charisma of OOO has even "captured the notice of celebrities" [8]. So it's obviously very important. Or fashionable. You won't read about Harman's flat ontology or the quadruple character of existence in Nature anytime soon, but you're quite likely to see him on the cover of Art Review and, who knows, maybe you'll one day come across a spread on him in Hello! (perhaps in the private London residence where he once entertained Benedict Cumberbatch).
Never one for false modesty, Harman compares his writing style in this new OOO for beginners book from Penguin, to that of Sigmund Freud. For whatever one thinks of Freud's psychological theories, "he is an undisputed master of the literary presentation of difficult ideas, and is well worth emulating in at least that respect" [14].
Never one for false modesty, Harman compares his writing style in this new OOO for beginners book from Penguin, to that of Sigmund Freud. For whatever one thinks of Freud's psychological theories, "he is an undisputed master of the literary presentation of difficult ideas, and is well worth emulating in at least that respect" [14].
That's true. But it's also much easier said than done. And, sadly, Harman doesn't quite pull it off. He hopes that reading his book will be as "pleasant an experience as possible" [17], but this is frustrated by the fact that it is often extremely tedious. Even passionate objectophiles with a good deal of sympathy for Harman's project, will, I fear, struggle to enjoy this text.
Which is a shame. For whilst I'm not convinced that his post-Heideggerean philosophy offers the best hope of a theory whose range of applicability is limitless, Harman and his fellow-travellers do at least offer an opportunity to reimagine a mind-independent reality - even if we can never accurately describe such in the language of literal propositions and must, therefore, either resort to poetic speculation or be reduced to silence, as Wittgenstein famously acknowledged.
Thanks for this interesting and typically provocative review, Stephen.
ReplyDeleteRe the metaphysical conception of objects (or anything), is the logical positivist prejudice here (on your part, not Harman's) that, if what's at stake can't be detected and/or corroborated by the five material senses, it isn't real? As far as human beings go, I'm not sure, to start with, where that leaves infra-red/ultra-violet light or the echolalia of bats, let alone the visions of Dante and Blake and the psychic apprehensions of dreams (and, indeed, the faculty of intuition itself).
What work does the term 'weird' demarcate or defend against here - especially if it's being, as it seems, perjoratively invoked? It's a wonderful category to conjure with, I think, embedded as it is in Old Germanic fatalism, Norse mythology and the Shakespearean supernatural - not to mention an Aristotelian conception of philosophy itself, which, for him, begins in wonder. (Interested readers may want to seek out Harman's book on the 'misantropic pulpsmith' H.P. Lovecraft, WEIRD REALISM, to put more freaky meat on the OOO bones.)
If anything, in the imaginal interests of thinking, it is the role of philosophy to critique the pretensions of natural science, just as it historically pushed back the over-reach of theology, as well as engaging in continuous acts of self-reflection - an undertaking that makes it curiously self-effacing. Of course, etymologically, it IS precisely a 'love of wisdom' - or, more precisely, the love of a goddess (Philo-Sophia). Leaving the defenestration of said goddess aside, the marginalisation of love from philosophic activity is a strange perversion that, no less strangely, has caught the attention of few supposed philosophers. However, it remains plausible that one can't 'know' anything or anyone (or at least have the poetic humility to know that not doesn't know them) without loving them and wondering at them. (Which may amount to the same thing in the end.)
The inseparability of philosophy from aesthetics, erotics and the speculative imaginary is probably, therefore, not only inevitable, but highly desirable. In our noisy and hyper-connected world, making room for Wittgenstein's sensitivity to silent transcendence isn't so much a fly in the philosopher’s ointment as the pearl in her shell.