Abstract
Abstract This article has two parts. The first one compares the ontological and epistemological implications of two main philosophical stances on how reality relates to appearance. I call the first group the “plane of superficiality,” where reality and appearance are the same; there is no gap between what a thing is and how it manifests itself. I call the second group “volume of representation,” in which reality is beyond appearances; there is an insurmountable gap between the thing and its phenomena. The second part of the article focuses on Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as the second group’s contemporary position. Within the OOO epistemological model of “knowledge without truth,” Harman’s schema of the observer’s participation in the object’s knowledge production is questioned. Alternatively, based on the notion proposed here of “flat representativity” in which each appearance is equally valuable to represent different aspects of the object, I argue for the full spectrum of the sensual as the basis for “knowledge without truth.” In particular, the aesthetic method, excluded from Harman’s concerns about knowledge, is suggested as another contribution to the episteme.
Highlights
The relationship between reality and appearance is an important point in any philosophical system and its associated knowledge model
I call the second group “volume of representation,” in which reality is beyond appearances; there is an insurmountable gap between the thing and its phenomena
All of them involve appearance in the form of sensory or mental experience as a fundamental element in the definition of reality. (Obviously, each gains uniqueness through their respective policies on how to handle these appearances as realities.) For the same reason, and oddly enough, materialistic theories fall into this category the moment they assume the possibility of bridging the reality–appearance gap, i.e., when they can epistemologically explain the nature of reality.[2]
Summary
The relationship between reality and appearance is an important point (if not the central one) in any philosophical system and its associated knowledge model. Focussing on Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), which is a discretized ontology of model (2), Harman refutes philosophies that claim direct access to reality (model [1]) and the continuous metaphysics of model (2) To this end, he coined the terms “undermining, overmining, and duomining” (the “miner” critique).[3] In this way, any form of literalism, which claims that “any object can be adequately paraphrased by describing the qualities it possesses,” is rejected.[4] On the contrary, OOO postulates that autonomous objects populate the world, each being a unique and withdrawn reality containing a finite plurality of qualities. If the aesthetic method is a way of indirectly accessing the elusive reality, why not use it for the elusive qualities, meaning for the production of unmeasurable knowledge? If “the search for knowledge is [] a literalist enterprise,”[7] aesthetics appears as a promising field that, besides referring to the withdrawn reality as OOO maintains, can reveal non-literal qualities: for example, aesthetic impressions as another sort of expression of the object
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