Quentin Meillassoux on Sufficient Reason and Non-Contradiction. In his book “After Finitude”, he explains that the principle of facticity (which he also refers to as “the principle of unreason”) stands in contrast to Leibniz’s “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which states that anything that happens does so for a definite reason. From pg. 33 of After Finitude: “But we also begin to understand how this proof [the ontological proof of God] is intrinsically tied to the culmination of a principle first formulated by Leibniz, although already at work in Descartes, viz., the principle of sufficient reason, according to which for every thing, every fact, and every occurence, there must be a reason why it is thus and so rather than otherwise.
For not only does such a principle require that there be a possible explanation for every worldly fact; it also requires that thought account for the unconditioned totality of beings, as well as for their being thus and so. As to the principle of non-contradiction: Pg. 60: Continuing on pg. 77: Meillassoux's Answer to Hume's Problem. Introduction In this post I present Meillassoux's alternative answer to Hume’s challenge against causal necessity. I first present in schematic fashion the classical version of the ‘problem of causality’ as elaborated by Hume (2000, 2007), as well as the well known answer famously proposed by Kant’s (1999) ‘Copernican turn’ in the first Critique. I then proceed to diagnose some problems associated with the latter’s reply, and show how Meillassoux (2008) proposes a different answer altogether.
Accepting Hume’s disavowal of causal necessity, I explain how Meillassoux lays the grounds for a new brand of what has been termed ‘speculative realism’; where the latter dislodges transcendental philosophy and its methodological restriction to investigating subjective conditions of access to the world. I - Hume’s Problem – Causality, Necessity, Transcendence “May I not conceive that a hundred different events might as well follow from that cause? II - Kant vs. III – Chance Outside Probability. Dark Chemistry - Quentin Meillassoux: Benefit and Alterity - Revisioning Metaphysics; or a Dark Materialism?
"One could not better describe the movement underway: this benefit (bien) from a thirst for otherness [altérité] and the decentering which metaphysics begins again in the plural, requiring us to think this profusion in preserving it, as much as we can, from ancient wanderings. " - Quentin Meillassoux Is there a need to return to metaphysics? It seems Quentin Meillassoux has decided we should begin by "returning to the surface of those either forgotten or neglected for a long time Last there is the "rediscovery of an “other metaphysics” [autre métaphysique] (according to the expression of Pierre Montebello) is accompanied by the discovery of a metaphysics of the other [métaphysique de l'autre]—that is to say, of “non-Western” peoples.
But what is the basis of this new metaphysics that Meillassoux so willingly would have us resuscitate then transform into a new pluralistic form. "Time throws the die, but only to shatter it, to multiply its faces, beyond any calculus of possibilities. 1. Correlationism and the Fate of Philosophy. There are works of philosophy and theory that help clarify the thought of a particular philosopher or a particular concept without unsettling our presuppositions about the nature, key assumptions, and primary aims of philosophy.
There are then works of philosophy that remind us what philosophy itself is, which call us to philosophy, and which have the effect of unsettling those assumptions that are so proximal, so basic, that they are all but invisible. Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency certainly belongs to the latter category. Regardless of whether one agrees with his conclusions (and I am not at all decided), should Meillassoux never write another book– this is his first –he will have already made a substantial contribution to the history of philosophy. As developed by Meillassoux, the predominant orientation of thought in contemporary philosophy is that of correlationism. From within this framework, the realist, Like this: Like Loading... 6 keys to After Finitude « Object-Oriented Philosophy.