Necessity Of Contingency Research Articles

The Necessity of Contingency on Effective Reality in Hegel’s Science of Logic

Para Hegel, el rendimiento supremo del pensamiento consiste en hallar un terreno en el cual se pongan en evidencia las dimensiones primarias de la realidad. Por esta vía consigue desarrollar uno de sus planteamientos más interesantes en la Ciencia de la lógica, a saber, el concepto de realidad efectiva. Este artículo elabora esa visión de la realidad comentando cuidadosamente lo que Hegel desarrolla allí. Al final muestra que la realidad absoluta es a la vez diferenciación en multiplicidades existentes e inversión de esa contingencia en absoluta necesidad, es decir, se pone como contingente para recuperarse a sí misma en la necesidad.

Meillassoux’s Reinterpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic

Abstract This article attempts to read the Transcendental Dialectic through Meillassoux’s model of the absolute contingency of being in order to rethink some of its central difficulties. Specifically, this concerns better understanding the role played by the categories of relation and modality in the empirical use of the ideas of reason, which underlies their regulative use that is directed at an absolute unity of reason. It will be discussed which questions are implied in the central claim of Meillassoux’s ontology, i.e., that it is possible to derive from the necessity of contingency the existence and noncontradictory being of the thing in itself. First, I will retrace basic points of Meillassoux’s critique of “correlationism”, by means of which he reconfigures the divisions between metaphysics, physics, and ontology. Second, against the background of the Kantian concept of hope, I will examine a relation between the Transcendental Dialectic and ethics, as, respectively, conceived of in Kant and in Meillassoux’s reinterpretation. Third, I will critically ask in how far absolute contingency can be understood as grounding a concept of experience and in which sense the idea of the antinomy chapter in the Transcendental Dialectic contains an argument more complex than Meillassoux’s model suggests.

Paradox of the Arche-fossil

In his influential After Finitude. An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (2008), Quentin Meillassoux argues that *Correlationism* (an umbrella-term encompassing most varieties of Idealism) gives rise to an irresolvable paradox, called "the Paradox of the Arche-fossil", which is essentially a clash between philosophical principles and scientific findings. This irresolvable paradox of Correlationism then paves the way for the "Speculative Turn" and the ensuing rise of burgeoning "speculative realism" in Continental Philosophy: noumenal reality, as-it-is-in-and-of-itself, "the Great Outdoors", is back on the Continental stage, open for speculative thought and even metaphysical knowledge. We attempt to provide a thorough and charitable analysis of the Paradox of the Arche-fossil. Our analyses lead us to conclude that Meillassoux's argument fails, due to an ambiguity with regard to the concept of being that cannot be repaired. We end by directing attention to another ominous threat to Correlationism, ignored by Meillassoux and all "speculative realists" alike, which is still breathing.

Critique in the Age of Indifference

In After Finitude, Meillassoux asks an epoch-defining question: how can we criticize both ideological dogmatism and skeptical fanaticism if the rise of skeptical fanaticism is an effect of the Kantian critical philosophy one must employ against ideological dogmatism? Meillassoux's answer is to argue in favor of thought's ability to access the absolute necessity of contingency. Agamben and Laruelle give an alternative answer. Although very different in style and argument, both aim to disqualify fanatical positions by showing how "the belief that belief is all there is" is not all there is because of the contingent nature of thought about the real. I will argue that while pursuing logics of disqualification, all three thinkers nonetheless employ arguments that render positive claims that sit uncomfortably within their respective systems. The upshot is that the transcendental gesture of critical philosophy—what are the conditions of our positive claims about thought and the world—is halted by an uncritical appeal to the condition of all conditions; intellectual intuition in Meillassoux and an indifferent thought/real in Agamben and Laruelle. But what options remain, given that the problem of critique in an age of indifference is a problem that critical philosophy itself has created? The task, I will argue, is to express the transcendental conditions of what we know about the world and how we know what we know about the world in a manner that retains the contingency of both. But are there variants of contemporary thought that can express the contingency of the real and of thought while remaining within the transcendental apparatus providing the necessary criteria for the challenge of both ideological dogmatism and skeptical fanaticism? I shall bring the argument to a close by suggesting that two such variants are available—transcendental naturalism and transcendental aestheticism—and that the latter provides a secure but non-dogmatic ground for critique in an age of indifference.

The Anomaly of Anomaly of Anomaly

The Anomaly of Anomaly of Anomaly

Possibility of Science, Impossibility of Miracles: Léon Brunschvicg against Quentin Meillassoux

The article argues that, while Quentin Meillassoux‘s project, undertaken in After Finitude, merits attention, since the French philosopher is right that faith in sciences‘ capacity to open up new domains to thought must be restored, the solutions he offers have two serious shortcomings. 1) His depiction of science as the producer of ancestral statements does not capture satisfactorily the essence of scientific creativity. 2) The claim that everything is necessarily contingent is fundamentally incompatible with scientific knowledge. The article, then, contrasts Meillassoux‘s principle of the necessity of contingency with a principle that is extracted from the historical epistemology of Léon Brunschvicg and Antoine-Augustin Cournot. Instead of a principle of unreason, the article defends a principle of a metamorphosing reason founded on the practical impossibility of irreducible contingency.

Eugene Thacker’s Conception of Negative Correlation Regarding Quentin Meillassoux’s Speculative Materialism

The current article deals with the analysis of the recently proposed ontological possibility to think the thing-in-itself. Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative materialism is explained in relation with Eugene Thacker’s critique of vitalistic correlation which is assumed as a broader attempt of thinking to transcend itself. The latter analysis manifests the limit of Meillassoux’s project optimism, concerning the ordering of necessity of contingency, situated through the epistemological conditioning of possibilities. In this part, contingent logic requires the full apprehension of the possibility to be otherwise despite the determination of logical probabilism. The article ends with the explanation of Thacker’s suggestion of the new mediation theory based on the excommunication (the negative communication act) as the primal condition of every speculative approach.

Lukács in Self-Translation: The Necessity of Contingency in The Soul and the Forms

A series of meditations on history and criticism, György Lukács's The Soul and the Forms appeared first in Hungarian in 1910 and then in German in 1911—arguably having been translated by the author himself, as a work of mourning. Despite renewed interest in the work, English-language editions have been taken from the German translation and barely consider the Hungarian version. This essay argues that an exemplary skirmish takes place in translation between the Hungarian and the German texts, as Lukács shifts from an Epicurean-Lucretian to a Stoicist view of causality. Not unlike in the early notebooks of Marx, a materialist Lukács can be located in his first collection of essays, despite the fact that it is usually pigeonholed as part of his grand idealist phase. Farkas is particularly interested in how Lukács's self-translation washes over a Romantic concept of irony as Lukács posits the necessity of a mixture of necessity and contingency as the origin of the critic's irony, a move that undermines his own non-totalizing view of irony as a structural principle of the novel in his 1917 work The Theory of the Novel.

Romanticism and Speculative Realism

AbstractMy essay surveys two recent philosophical strains of thoughts, Speculative Realism and Object‐Oriented Ontology, in order to show their relevance to Romantic literature and culture, and the humanities more widely. I explain how Quentin Meillassoux, in his book After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, targets “correlationism,” the notion that there is no access to the world except by the human mind, as the defining problem of modern thought. Romanticist Timothy Morton, springboarding from Graham Harman's Meillassoux‐inspired Object‐Oriented Ontology, theorizes what he calls a “hyperobject,” a non‐localized object like climate change that disturbs and disrupts the supposed connection between human being and worldly phenomenon. These theories, I show, intersect with Romantic apocalyptic traditions that foresee a future paradise brought on by human action. As I read it, though, Meillassoux's Speculative Realism and Morton's hyperobjects shine a light on the largely ignored, post‐apocalyptic aspects of Romantic literature in works like Shelley's “Mont Blanc.” I argue that Romantic post‐apocalypticism relies on Romantic irony to root us in a temporality of the present rather than a deferred vision of a utopian future.

Thinking Meillassoux’s Factiality: A pedagogical movement against ossification of bodymind

This article is about a pedagogical movement I discern in Quentin Meillassoux’s ontology. The goal of the essay is to introduce his approach to reality in outline form and offer it as a possible route to conceptualize education as the practice of keeping the bodymind attentive and agile against its unsound ossification by way of providing a unified heightened sense of meaning, that is, consummatory experience, in a radically open and contingent world. Meillassoux offers a new conception of necessity and contingency based on the Badioun principle that ‘nothing is inaccessible to reason.’ This move helps Meillassoux to claim that reason can access the absolute for there is no inaccessible necessary transcendence by providing an intriguing critique of the principle of sufficient reason. As a result, Meillassoux’s argument leads to the conclusion that the only necessity is contingency itself. By excluding any necessary being, but also maintaining the absolute necessity of contingency itself, Meillassoux establishes what he calls the “factial.” Meillassoux’s factiality induce pedagogical interventions that lead to acquiring a new point of view whereby ossification of bodymind is staved off and a state of mind that is endlessly fascinated by the immanence, or the most radical becoming, of the world is achieved.

CONTINGENCY WITHOUT UNREASON

In this essay I critique the identification of contingency with sheer arbitrary possibility in Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. After offering logical and metaphysical reasons for why such an identification is a limitation on the speculative potential of reason, I draw upon Charles S. Peirce, Gilles Deleuze, and Giambattista Vico to articulate the outlines of a view of contingency which can underwrite a different speculative position to one that is grounded upon an absolute of unreason. This form of speculation, a realism of contingency without an axiom of unreason, is indicated in outline by the structure of divination practices. I thus propose, without defending its actuality, at least the possibility of a divinatory form of speculation that is adequate to the absolute status of contingency.

Deus atque id quod fieri potest

Los razonamientos de Leibniz para mostrar la existencia de Dios se comparan con un argumento no-modal de G. Mavrodes y con recientes reformulaciones modales del argumento ontológico de san Anselmo. Se analizan el principio leibniziano de que “si el ente necesario puede ser, entonces es” y el de la “necesidad de la contingencia” de san Buenaventura (y santo Tomás), junto con la “única base para probar la existencia de Dios” de Kant en su periodo precrítico (“la fundación de la posibilidad”). Se sugiere que el ejemplarismo tradicional (como en san Agustín) fundamenta resultados de la teoría modal actual y escolástica, desembocando en una cosmovisión integral tanto cristiana como filosófica.

Machinic Interagency and Co-evolution

Machinic Interagency and Co-evolution

Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism (review)

Reviewed by: Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism Andrea Gogröf-Voorhees Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism. By Markus Gabriel and Slavoj Žižek. London: Continuum, 2009. Pp. 202. Cloth $24.95. ISBN 978-1441191052. The fetching title of this book is misleading. Those who are interested in learning about mythology, laughter, and madness as constitutive concepts defining German Idealism are in for a challenging surprise. This book, divided into three parts (part one by Markus Gabriel, parts two and three by Slavoj Žižek), with each part divided into essays of unequal length, is for specialists of German Idealism exclusively. Academics with background knowledge only will gain, perhaps, some small insights of value concerning the debate between the (post)modern ontological argument and the one supporting traditional epistemology. The main argument, however, gets lost through Gabriel and Žižek’s conceptual virtuosity. Here is just one example: “The weird sounding syntagm ‘coefficient of adversity’ belongs to G. Bachelard who reproached Husserl’s phenomenology with ignoring the inertia of objects resisting subjective appropriation in its notion of noematic objectivity as constituted by the transcendental subject’s noetic activity” (Žižek 156). [End Page 155] However, the leading idea of the book is sensible. The authors posit Kant’s “critique of all possible metaphysics” (1) once more as the cornerstone of modern philosophy, to show how post-Kantian Idealism still represents the most sophisticated and, ironically enough, realistic way to think of philosophy and subjective consciousness and personal agency today. Countering the conservative school of analytical philosophy (i.e., Moore and Russell) that defends Kant as the last philosopher “who makes sense” against the “undisciplined regressions into meaningless speculation” performed by the main representatives of the post-Kantian turn, namely Schelling, Hegel, and Fichte, and weary of the “continental,” post-Hegelian deconstructionist, poststructuralist, and neopragmatist philosophers who see the post-Kantian turn as the central, yet untranslatable philosophical event always already on its way and yet to be deciphered, Gabriel and Žižek propose to tackle what they see as having so far been neglected by these two camps (the nature of the absolute and the concept of finitude) and to offer new and original perspectives on the problem of subjectivity in German Idealism. Simply put, their argument advances, and their examples illustrate, that contemporary philosophy, analytical and continental, fails to recognize that the works of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel contain in themselves and thus already anticipate the “alleged” post-Hegelian turn defined by the suspicion of any form of dialectical mediation as a process of world-, truth-, and self-formation. Neither Gabriel nor Žižek promote a return to (neo-) Hegelianism as a justification of the “necessity of contingency” (Gabriel 52). However, both debunk contemporary tendencies in modern philosophy, politics, and culture to naively or conveniently embrace indeterminacy and ethical relativism to the detriment of (all-too-often traumatic) concrete historical reality and personal accountability. Gabriel, in his defense of what I would call conscious mythology, defends self-reflexivity, the actualized, concrete paradox of subjective consciousness as the fundamental and positive, creative and “real” activity, in a welcome moment of clarity: “The world creates images of itself in the activity of our creation of images of the world.” This does not elevate the world to the realm of theory, but posits it as a (present and finite) creation out of our own doing in the here and now: “Our world pictures are not cheap copies of what there really is because they are an essential aspect of what there really is” (Gabriel 35). Similarly, Žižek’s insightful reevaluation of the Hegelian concept of “habit” as the saving “grace” from madness and his analysis of the Fichtean laughter as the expression of the Lacanian marker of humanness, “terrifying excess” as in the infamous “objet a,” shows his justified plea for an honest acknowledgement of (repressed) human self-limitation as the thing to be tackled anew and perhaps radicalized. [End Page 156] Andrea Gogröf-Voorhees Western Washington University Copyright © 2012 German Studies Association

Chaotic Contingency and the Obsessional Subject

This paper examines the place of Chaos in what Quentin Meillassoux suggests is the ‘necessity of contingency’, the critical reception of this reading of Chaos by Slavoj Žižek, and the obsessional mode of logos facilitated by such a reading. Rather than merely repeat the insights of Meillassoux and Žižek, the discussion will push toward some critical comments on the status of the philosophical subject supposed by Žižek’s critique of Meillassoux and the analysis of logos more broadly when grounded upon the primordial contingent act of the withdrawal from Chaos reinterpreted by Žižek as Nothing. Drawing on Žižek’s readings of Hegel and Schelling, it will be shown how the ‘tarrying with the contingent’ engaged in by both Meillassoux and Žižek opens the subject of such a philosophical analysis to an obsessive terrain of contingency’s maddening infinite demand: to not stop not being.

The Necessity of Contingency and the Powerlessness of Nature

In this paper I argue that there are two distinct senses of contingency operative within Hegel's philosophy, and that the failure to sufficiently distinguish between them can lead to a misrepresentation of Hegel's idealism. The first sense of contingency is the categorical one explicated in the Science of Logic, in which contingency carries the meaning of dependence and conditionality, while the second sense of contingency, predominantly found within the Philosophy of Nature, means irrationality and chance. Not only does Hegel acknowledge a systematic place for the necessity of contingency within his ontological logic, but he also admits the existence of real chance and multiplicity in nature. However, I claim that these two acknowledgements should not be collapsed since they involve different senses of contingency.

The Necessity of Contingency: Some Notes

(1998). The Necessity of Contingency: Some Notes. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 74-79.

The Necessity of Contingency

The Necessity of Contingency