Woodard on Grant

Ben Woodard has a long post on Iain Hamilton Grant, HERE.
However, in referring to a recent remark I made about Grant on this blog, Ben somehow got my meaning backwards.

Here is the relevant passage from this blog:

“Namely, [the Speculative Realists are] all realists in the sense of accepting a reality beyond human access to it. But there’s the other, epistemological use of the term ‘realism,’ which means that reality is also accessible to us in its own character. In the Berlin lecture, Meillassoux goes so far as to define realism as the knowability of the real. Which is something I of course cannot accept, and it’s something that Grant doesn’t really accept either, since for him knowledge is the production of phenomenal products, not a reflexive access to something.”

Ben comments as follows:

“This is the guiding realist thread of the System of Transcendental Idealism which can appear too Kantian or too Fichetean to those who do not read it closely. This is why Harman’s recent comment about Grant’s relation to epistemology is not quite fair I think. Knowledge is filtered through products/objects via a combination of intuition and reflection pointing to ideation as a process whereas Harman suggests knowledge is a production of the phenomenal.”

To which I have two points in response.

1. One would call a remark “not quite fair” if it were intended negatively. But it should be clear from the above that my remark on Grant was meant positively. I was saying, namely, that Grant and I agree that knowledge is not about a special human subject coming into special relation with a non-human object.

2. By no means do I read Grant as Kantian or Fichtean, but precisely the contrary. The whole point is that for Grant, what idealists call phenomena are actually phenomenal products, meaning that they are part of nature just like everything else. I made this point in Grant’s presence in Bonn, and he wholeheartedly agreed. And that’s exactly why Meillassoux’s Berlin lecture (correctly) groups me and Iain on one side of the great divide and Meillassoux and Brassier on the other. This is the crucial fault line, more than any other.

another fun 1988 video: Bentsen torches Quayle

I looked this up in order to see the famous “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy line.” But while watching, I was more fascinated by the reminder of what an utter lightweight Quayle was, and how ridiculous it is that he was ever Vice President of the country for four years. Just listen to his response to Brokaw’s question and try to find any content in it.

Bill Clinton’s 1988 convention speech

Since Clinton seems to be getting good reviews for his convention speech last night (I haven’t seen it), I went back and found this excerpt of his disastrous convention debut speech in 1988, where he bored the hell out of the audience.

Funny to see all those Dukakis signs in the crowd and remember a moment in time when Dukakis was viewed as a superstar (he led Bush Sr. by up to 17% before collapsing) and Clinton was viewed as a flop. 24 years later, Clinton is regarded as the most talented U.S. politician in decades while Dukakis (a very good man) is an embarrassment in Democratic Party annals.

If nothing else, it’s fun to catch a glimpse of Bill Clinton in his early 40’s again.