and just as happily…

Having finished off two articles today, I can start writing L’objet quadruple tomorrow. I’m writing it in English; a good translator is doing the French rendition.

What you can expect from this book:

*a slightly different way of framing my previous researches

*a much more compressed account of the themes on which I have already published extensively (I get even more tired of writing about the tool-analysis than others do reading about it, but at this point I can handle it pretty well in a couple of paragraphs)

*a far more technically precise version of the mechanics of vicarious causation, and probably in a way leading to more concrete subject matter. Those who are demanding a politics of speculative realism are unlikely to find it in this book, but there is likely to be a lot more juicy “life philosophy” sorts of stuff than my readers are accustomed to.

Nonetheless, it will be a fairly short book, its length tailored entirely to what grants were available to pay the translator. In October the French may add a matching grant, and if that happens then the length will be doubled on the fly. But the initial grant is for 45,000 words, which is a nice, crisp length for a philosophy book.

The English “original” will also be published separately, but I can’t announce that quite yet.

L’inexistence divine

Finally, I have my long-awaited bootleg copy of Meillassoux’s L’inexistence divine. The only reason he let me have it early is that I was asked to write a probable book on After Finitude, but seem to have convinced the publisher that it would be much more interesting to go into many other Meillassoux materials as well. I’m greatly looking forward to this project, though it can’t even really get on the road until early 2010.

And I’m not allowed to comment, Gibbon-style, on L’inexistence divine. So this is the last I’ll be saying about it here, and everyone will have to wait for the book to come out.

I can probably say this, though… L’inexistence divine is of a much more manageable length than expected. The rumor mill said 700-800 pages at one point, and that’s false. It’s a normal-length philosophy book, though significantly longer than After Finitude. (But I have a 2001 version; perhaps the ENS thesis is hundreds and hundreds of pages. I’ve never seen that one. You have to go into the ENS microfilm area, I’ve been told by a Meillassoux student.)

“black noise” illustrated

NICOLA HAS POSTED delightfully weird illustrations of “On Vicarious Causation.”

Levi on continental writing

I’m going to LINK TO LEVI AGAIN, because this is another especially inspiring post about the need to do continental philosophy that is not saturated with references to names.

“Philosophy wouldn’t proceed through the activity of commentary as is practiced in Continental thought today, but rather there would be direct ownership of one’s writing and appropriation of the history of philosophy. Just as the peppers in my garden are borne of the soil, the water, and air out of which they grow without displaying these elements in any recognizable sense, such a writing would be willing to take direct responsibility for how it has ‘prehended’ or integrated that history without thematically making that history the issue or question of the writing. Is it possible, today, to write in the fashion of a Descartes, Spinoza, or Hume?”

The answer to the last question is yes.

But the easy mistake would be to think: “all philosophy consists either of references to names, or of arguments made independently of all references; therefore, genuine philosophy should consist of nothing but arguments.”

The self-confidence and attention to clarity of analytic philosophy are admirable. But they are not enough. A philosophy is made of arguments no more than an apple is made of red, round, cold, sweet, and juicy. It is possible to assemble all the rigorous argumentative features of what looks like a philosophy, but without any animating spirit or philosophical eros. Indeed, it’s not just possible, but quite common. “An exact wax duplicate of Gandhi cannot free India of the Empire.”; “Arguments are a dime a dozen.”

The goal is not to give arguments, but to bring realities gradually into focus. Explicit arguments are only one hammer in the toolbox for achieving this aim.

(None of these qualifications are aimed at Levi, who knows exactly what I am talking about.)