Meillassoux book finished

I’ll be sending the manuscript to Edinburgh tonight after work. Just need to make a final check-through to look for truly idiotic minor mistakes (which seem to be never completely preventable in a book in any case, I’m afraid).

It’s been a pleasure to spend five or so months reflecting daily on what Meillassoux has accomplished so far. As expected, he himself has been extraordinarily helpful and supportive. The debate between Speculative Materialism and Object-Oriented Philosophy will not be settled by this book, but I do think its basic features will become a lot more evident. The book shows that our two philosophies are in many ways mirror images of each other. Meillassoux radicalizes Strong Correlationism in such a way as to eliminate its weaknesses, while my philosophy can be read as a radicalization of Weak Correlationism that also eliminates the weaknesses of that position.

The problem, as I see it, is that it’s by no means clear that Strong Correlationism is even possible; Meillassoux tries to show that it doesn’t slip into full-blown Absolute Idealism, but it takes a Zen-like paradox to make this believable, and in fact I compare Strong Correlationism in Chapter 4 to the “sound of one hand clapping”, the “gateless gate”, and the “Buddha-less Buddha”. If you meet Hegel on the road, kill him.

In the end, what unifies the two philosophies in their opposition is an obsession with the principle of sufficient reason, which Meillassoux rejects and I emphatically support. When you read the book you’ll see where I think his position goes wrong on that question.

My next book project, which I cannot begin until the January holiday period, will be Treatise on Objects, though please don’t be misled by the title: it will be at least as unorthodox as Circus Philosophicus. I’ll write the Lovecraft book during the summer.