The Absolute as the Meeting Point Between Speculation and Fiction

Daina Habdankaitė

doi:10.1515/opphil-2020-0109

Abstract

Abstract The article investigates Meillassoux’s notion of the absolute in relationship with the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems. The absolute, as independent of subjective consciousness, is showcased as the meeting point of speculation and fiction. By looking into Meillassoux’s notions of speculation and some works of weird fiction, it is argued that the significant role of imagination as well as a deferred temporality is what facilitates the discussion of both speculation and fiction as faculties able to transcend the limitations that are projected by the correlationist mind. Through a reading of Lovecraftian fiction, both the strong and weak points of Meillassoux’s argumentation in After Finitude and Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction are identified, proving the latter to be a less successful way of grasping the chaotic real.

Highlights

Is a noncorrelationist cogito still rational?Let us first look into Meillassoux’s notion of thought and thinking. It ought to be said that his use of cogito stems from Cartesian roots
The article investigates Meillassoux’s notion of the absolute in relationship with the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems
By looking into Meillassoux’s notions of speculation and some works of weird fiction, it is argued that the significant role of imagination as well as a deferred temporality is what facilitates the discussion of both speculation and fiction as faculties able to transcend the limitations that are projected by the correlationist mind

Summary

Is a noncorrelationist cogito still rational?

Let us first look into Meillassoux’s notion of thought and thinking. It ought to be said that his use of cogito stems from Cartesian roots. Thought can think Being.”[8] Interestingly though, Meillassoux’s path toward being is through mathematical expression, which one could be tempted to associate with idealist movements In his After Finitude, Meillassoux takes a speculative path toward noncorrelational reality by putting his trust in mathematical discourse and claiming the following: “Our absolute, in effect, is nothing other than an extreme form of chaos, a hyper-Chaos, for which nothing is or would seem to be, impossible, not even the unthinkable. Of weird literature as Lovecraft’s novels perform an analogous temporal shift by presenting a piece of reality which either is rooted in ancestral time (The Great Old Ones) or steps out of human temporality altogether (the realm of necromancers) In both discourses – speculative and fictional – discourses, the imaginary becomes crucial.

Horror of the real through dissociation

Extro-science fiction versus weird fiction