another thing about L’inexistence divine

Another point about L’inexistence divine is that the length of the book leads Meillassoux to change his pace and tone a bit. We’ve known him so far as the master of the concise and the economical. But in the big book he is able to linger a bit over his arguments and illustrate in several different ways how they apply to contemporary debate. For instance, you’ll see him getting involved with some of the details of contemporary debates over Darwinism. Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr make an appearance, and as expected, creationists come on stage once again to boos and hisses, as do defenders of the anthropic principle (they had already appeared in After Finitude as well, of course).

The tone of After Finitude and his articles is that of an epigrammist who has expanded his usual short essay style into a long essay. In L’inexistence divine, we find instead the tone of the systematic philosopher who has decided to go at the sort of pace that one can keep up for 1,200 pages. (That’s not how long the version is that I have, but apparently the final version will consist of three volumes.) He’s kept the lucidity of his familiar style, and the extra length isn’t coming from verbiage; it’s coming from a greater number of examples and occasional recapitulations of the argument.