Hegel's Speculative Universe

Correlationism, Contingency, and Necessity

Correlationism: The Philosopher's Quest Reloaded

In recent years, a major challenge to the Kantian tradition has emerged in the form of speculative realism. Among others, some of the key figures associated with speculative realism are Françoise Laruelle, Ray Brassier, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Although there are different shades of speculative realism, what they all tend to hold in common is the idea of an independent Real that can be represented and/or accessed in some way. In this regard, Laruelle and Meillassoux can be seen as representing two ends of the speculative realism spectrum. Laruelle argues that every philosophy is defined by an "enchanted circle" of three interrelated moments: an (empirical) datum, a factum of a priori categories, and finally a synthesis of the datum and factum through the a priori functioning. All previous philosophy therefore remains caught within its own decisional circle of reflexive determination; that is, a recycling (tautological) process whereby the very process of the established methodological or evidential inquiry serves to (re-)validate the initial decision of the particular philosophy. In order to break out of this circularity, Laruelle asserts the primacy of the Real as an idempotent One or, as Nick Srnicek puts it, an "always-already-given-without-givenness." Against what he perceives as the stranglehold of the predominant paradigm of (universal) Being and its necessary decisionalism, Laruelle affirms instead the radical immanence of the Real that, precisely as such, is generic; that is, a Real that, at some level, can also be said to always already exist in its own terms.

Yet the problem here is that Laruelle can only determine his non-decisional perspective, or non-philosophy, through the decisional itself and, in this way, he becomes caught in his own tautological trap. As Meillassoux points out, Laruelle's positing of an independent Real amounts ultimately to little more than a coup de force. Laruelle posits the existence of a Real that precedes and is indifferent to thought while simultaneously concealing the fact that this very act of positing is a decisional act; an outcome of his own thought. In other words, he simply interrupts the consistency of his own method at a certain point. And this structural inconsistency is something that runs throughout his avowed non-philosophy:

Non-philosophy is supposed to think the relation of thinking with a Real which precedes philosophy, but the name "non-philosophy" can only be constructed from the name "philosophy" together with a negation. Philosophy precedes non-philosophy in nomination, as in the acts of thinking. Hence, we have the first and manifest pragmatic contradiction between what Laruelle says about the Real and what he does when elaborating this notion.

Laruelle's attempt to assert the existence of an external Real necessarily embroils him in an unreflected correlationism. Indeed, Meillassoux argues forcefully that any attempt to posit an external or independent substance is, by definition, correlationist. Rejecting this type of externality, Meillassoux adopts an approach that proceeds to the very heart of correlationism with a view to exploding it from within. Like Richard Rorty, Meillassoux accepts that modern philosophy effectively began with Kant and his critique of traditional metaphysics. Kant famously rejected the search for primary substance, arguing that we cannot penetrate through to ultimate reality beyond our ideas and sense-experience; we cannot know the world "in itself" beyond our perceptions and conceptual constructs. Rorty applauds this first move of Kant but argues that it is limited, and even contradicted, by a second move. While Kant was willing to view the empirical world as a contingent experiential construction (the world is what we make of it), he nonetheless maintained that intrinsic nature and higher truth resided at the level of mind and spirit. The ongoing task of philosophy, therefore, should be to extend and radicalize the logic of Kant's first move and to affirm that there is no higher truth or intrinsicality to be expressed or represented.

Yet for Meillassoux, the task of philosophy is more or less the opposite. From his viewpoint, Kant's first move has resulted in a serious hampering of philosophical enterprise. This is because it gives rise to the predominant paradigm of correlationism. Correlationism effectively undermines all immediacy and means that the Real always has to be put in parenthesis in regard to a historically subjective realism. All of contemporary philosophy is essentially bound by an implicit Kantian understanding that it is not "possible to consider the realms of subjectivity and objectivity independently of one another." Objectivity always remains relative to us and the world can appear as "the world": that is, as a correlate of human thought (language, culture, and so on). Every philosophical tradition since Kant — from Husserl to Heidegger to Derrida and Lacan — remains within the confines of the correlationist logic. Modern philosophy has created a transparent cage for itself and has thereby lost the "great outdoors" as the non-relative in-itself. Against Rorty's (Kantian) injunction that we should simply abandon the quest for intrinsic nature, Meillassoux is demanding that this quest be reloaded and that it is perfectly possible to reach for, and to grasp, the primary qualities of what is Real. The point, however, is not to reject correlationism, but rather to ventilate philosophy and to establish a new kind of post-correlationist thought that opens toward the outdoors and the in-itself.

Correlationism affirms the finitude of our understanding and engagement with the world. But if all understanding is limited by the correlate (the "for us"), then this limitation is an absolute one. Correlationists are consequently obliged to accept the fact that the world may be quite different from the particular terms of their ("for us") representation of it. Meillassoux thus takes the opposite stance of Rorty. Where Rorty maintains the need to come to terms with the finitude of our historico-cultural engagement with the world, Meillassoux argues that it is through this finitude that we acquire "the absolute knowledge that the world might be other than we think." It is precisely because every finitude (correlate) is an inherent failure — that is, a delimitation of possibilities that exceed it — that a path to the absolute is opened. What renders the absolute is not correlation as such but rather the facticity, or radical contingency, of correlation: the fact that the in-itself can always be something other than the given. This perspective does not return to any philosophy of a substance-behind-the-veil, but neither does it remain within the confines of standard correlationism. By changing the terms of engagement, the correlationist limitation becomes the very point of escape via the affirmation of...