prior to Dundee

[NOTE: Not long after making this post, I clicked the link on Levi’s page and noticed that the post in question was by Adrian Ivakhiv, not Adrian Johnston. So, the references to Johnston below are rendered irrelevant as concerns the post, which should be credited to Adrian Ivakhiv. My apology to both gentlemen for misunderstanding the identity of the author.]

There will be plenty of chance to discuss objects and relations with Adrian Johnston in Dundee (and also with Peter Hallward, who is similar to Johnston in a number of important ways, so I’ll be outnumbered).

LEVI NOW HAS A POST UP responding to Johnston. And I just wanted to comment on one small part of what he quotes from Johnston:

“‘I’ am not restricted to ‘my body’ nor to a given state of ‘mind.’ But ‘I’ am also not a permanent, self-subsistent entity that is separate from my relations.”

Where does this “permanent, self-subsistent” thing keep coming from? Granted, Johnston doesn’t mention me by name here, but the point is that he is defining an opposition between relations and permanence, when those are not the only two options.

Just look at Aristotle’s theory of substance, the granddaddy of them all. Aristotle’s substances are by no means permanent. There is no afterlife for the human soul in Aristotle, let alone other kinds of souls. Plants are killed by drought. Horses die of old age.

From the fact that objects are not permanent (which I have never said they are) it does not follow that they are relational, nor that they are “congealments” or “changing, dynamic processes.”

I’m also opposed to Johnston’s notion that these congealments require “an action of self-ascription.” We’ve now been collectively beating up on substance in the name of process for a good long time, and I have to say, I think that move has completely shot its wad.

And finally: “But it’s all action, all process, all becoming; there’s nothing permanent ‘behind’ it.” Here again, an opposition is set up between becoming and permanence. But the whole point of the original theory of substance (Aristotle’s) was to allow for becoming by a thing that is somewhat durable, but not at all permanent. (I’m also not sure what the function of the scare quotes around the word “behind” is here.)

It’s similar to my objection to Shaviro. For some reason Shaviro thinks my position doesn’t allow for change. It’s hard to see why, since objects are changing constantly. But Shaviro wants to go completely to the other extreme and say that objects must be nothing but change, or else they are static, dreary lumps. But this reminds me of those decks of cards where you flip through and see a series of static images that seem to be changing just because you’re flipping through them very quickly.

Anyway, you can read that debate in The Speculative Turn, by reading Shaviro’s critical essay and my response. And as for Johnston, there is Dundee. (And I’ve had the relations argument with Hallward on a number of occasions already.)