System and/as Contingency: Quentin Meillassoux and the Ethics of Chance

Abstract

In recent years, the relation between contingency and systematic claims to the absolute has again come to play an important role in Continental philosophy. This essay takes a closer look at how this relation is developed in the works of French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux. It argues that a specific demand for systematic knowledge underlies not only Meillassoux's ontology, but also his ethics, which come into conflict with his own systematic aspirations in certain key areas, most notably in his attempt to derive an ethico-political model of subjectivity from his theory of contingency. The essay furthermore explores whether Meillassoux's monism of chance, by systematizing contingency and declaring it a universal principle, does not in fact deprive the contingent of its contingent character, introducing a reductive stability that condemns the subject to a passive waiting ultimately lacking in ethical significance.