Cogburn with a vigorous review

Cogburn is ANNOYED AT MARDER’S BOOK on the realist aspects of Derrida.

I must admit that at first I was really excited by the title and topic of that book, but then was put off by the style as well and ended up not ordering it (or “amazoning” it, to use Cogburn’s phrase). Compare Martin Hägglund’s style when writing about Derrida: clear and hard-hitting. I don’t know Marder, and wish him nothing but the best, but for now the style is preventing me from reading the book. (Cogburn’s page has examples.)

Cogburn also expresses surprise that neither Braver nor I are cited in the book. It’s true that Braver may have been too recent to cite. But if you’re writing on continental realism, another name that has to be mentioned is Manuel DeLanda. It’s always possible that there are writings I don’t know about, but in 2002 with both Tool-Being and DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, I think those may have been the first two books in the continental camp that proudly proclaimed realism rather than calling it a “pseudo-problem,” which was the usual continental approach since at least Husserl. (Latour calls himself a “realist” briefly in Pandora’s Hope in 1999, but there it’s more an ironic judo move against the term than a straightforward proclamation of it.)

But I’m interested in Cogburn’s point that a realist element in continental thought has always bubbled beneath the surface. Unlike Cogburn I happen to think that Schopenhauer’s not quite there yet (see his blistering remarks early in his major work about the gullible, naive people who think philosophy is supposed to be about reality itself rather than our conditions of access to it; Schopenhauer is a Kantian with an important twist, but still basically a Kantian). Nietzsche is a bit conflicted on the whole issue, but obviously has his strongly realist moments. And of course I’ve often argued that there is plenty of it in Heidegger, with “The Thing” only being the most obvious, final stage of it.

There’s a problem with the term “realism,” which is that once it becomes fashionable again (as may happen) then just about everyone will feel entitled to it. Anyone who claims in the most minimal fashion that the world resists us (or is “given” to us) will raise their hands and claim to be realists. But that’s not enough, as long as you still think the relation between human and resistance is the foundation of all other relations. Unless you think that the relation between human and fire is of the same basic stuff as the relation between fire and cotton, then you’re not exactly a realist.

And even if you are, then there are still at least two different possible camps. The first would be the “scientific realist” camp, which would nod approvingly about the fire example, since for them human consciousness is simply a physical reality just like cotton and fire are; science can explain it all. The second would be, for lack of a better name, the “metaphysical realist” camp, for which the fire and cotton are no more reducible to calculable physical interaction than consciousness is. Sign me up for the second camp. The first tries to turn philosophy into something it is not.

Philosophy is the handmaid of nothing. Most will be quick to agree that it’s not the handmaid of theology; no longer a controversy about that, at least not in suitably chic circles. But neither should it be the handmaid of science, and neither can it be the handmaid of politics. It can be of assistance in all of these areas, but it should no more be their slave than it should seek to enslave them. Too many examples of present-day philosophy are really just examples of attempts to enslave the discipline.