Journal Article

Speculative Justice: Quentin Meillassoux and Politics

Coombs, Nathan

2014

Overview

Both Meillassoux's admirers and his detractors tend to agree on the scientistic interpretation of his work (an interpretation that reaches an apogee in Matt Spencer's argument that After Finitude can support climate science).4 The flip side of the coin is that Meillassoux's philosophy has been treated to scarcely any attention from a political perspective. Since part of the appeal of speculative realism derives from its promise to disentangle metaphysics from the political determinations evident in much continental philosophy, to read politics into Meillassoux's work seems to run counter to the whole spirit of the enterprise. First was the regime of the cosmological symbol where, after the dissolution of myth by early natural philosophy, Plato tried to reconcile value and being by inscribing justice into the eternal Ideas. [...]was the birth of the romantic symbol in response to the blow dealt to the cosmological symbol by Newton with his description of planetary orbits in a linear, clockwork motion. [...]the overly scientistic reading of Meillassoux's work runs aground on Meillassoux's conspicuous lack of proof for the point which would secure his reputation as a stalwart of scientific realism.

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: Harman, Graham (1968- ) / Meillassoux, Quentin / Politics