and another post by Austin

This new post by Austin at Complete Lies is interesting. I still agree with his notion of what he calls “structuralism” (different from the traditional meaning of the term). That is to say, I agree with it in the sense that this is a position that some people see themselves as occupying: the real is not just posited by us, but is also really there as a trauma. I simply deny that this is a coherent position. Instead, I think it fits perfectly well in what I have called “Meillassoux’s Spectrum”: so-called structuralism, in Austin’s meaning (“real as trauma”) is either weak correlationism or it’s idealism. They can’t straddle the fence and say that it’s both real and unreal. If it’s real, then we have a weak correlationism, a sort of more poignant Kantianism in which the Ding an sich wounds us without being knowable. Or else we have a poignant idealism in which that which wounds is indeed posited by us, but isn’t just given in aloof theoretical observation.

And that’s why I tend to disagree with Austin’s final statement:

“I think this gives some idea, at least in part, of the limitations of ‘correlationism’ as a category. While it is useful and telling of certain figures, it is in no way the whole story. We simply need to add more characters to the story of contemporary philosophy.”

Referring to a simple schematization as an oversimplification will always look sophisticated, but there are cases where the landscape is actually simple, and where sophistication misses the point.

For the purposes of the realism question, Meillassoux offers approximately 6 possible positions (it depends on how you slice them; could be 5 or 7). I’ve simplified this to 4, because I think that’s all the nature of the case requires, at least in Meillassoux’s portrayal of things. I remain unconvinced that the additional positions proposed by Austin are actually new variations. But then again, he needs to make this claim in order to offer a previously undisclosed niche for figures such as Schopenhauer. Maybe he will succeed in doing so; I don’t yet see it.