on flat ontology

Since Levi’s been speaking a lot about “flat ontology” on his blog, let me add a few quick points to the discussion.

DeLanda uses “flat ontology” as a positive term. All realities are treated equally.

But Roy Bhaskar, much admired by DeLanda, uses it as a pejorative term, in which all entities are flattened out into their accessibility to human knowledge. (In other words, Bhaskar and DeLanda use the phrase “flat ontology” in two completely different ways.)

The early Latour is definitely a flat ontologist (though I believe DeLanda might dispute this in Latour’s case). Levi calls himself one as well.

But I’m not quite one. I allow for two and only two kinds of objects, which have very different sorts of properties.