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Speculation can be given a positive valence, Bye js Che sjtyation really this black
if it means a th eoriz ing uninhibited by and-wbjtel The last twp decqdu saw
utilit arian constraints. But even the most Che ememency qfmqvemencs such AS
abstract specula ti ve register, harbours enqctjyism for example which quempt
latent ideological implications; the question tq sc«e clear Uom che pjgfalls qr" both
being whether or not those implications extreme oosicions Does your adherence to
are predictable. More often however, nacyraJkm ngnqrily rnmmjt you CO a full
speculation serves as a pretex: for arbitrary, gbqndqnment qffolk Chegrizing?
self-indulgent fancy.
Ultimately.philosophy is at Nothing is ever black and
cnce analytic IJld l'fllthttlc.
Nothi1111 white, but 5ometimes i tis
It analysn lD otdet to philosophically necessary
1J11tbeslze. This I• not is ever /Jlock to render it so. I am
an original deftnlt.lon;
it i1 venerable, pitrbeps .� nd white, hut aware of enactivism,
embodied cognition,
evm hackneyed. but
Someti�nes it 1\ and the extended mind
it's one I believe to hypothesis. and while I
be ee1entially comet. '!philosophicull)' think t h e se approaches
The role of philosophy perform a philosophical
lodar la to nformulato �necessary tu
service by pointing ou.t the
mamablw qutltfon• about r:ender it so. explanatory deficiencies of
the natun of mind, meaning, a certain representarionalist
and reality not only in light orthodo1Cy in the philosophy
Df physics, biololY• and cognitive of mind, I find clsims about
scimce, but also taking into account the enactivism's philosophical radicality to
most theoretically sophisticated var:ieties be mudl exegerated. Much of it �trike s
of social theory, pa rti cu la rly in the Marxist me u Ar11totelluiam ia. a cog�itive
tradition. aciutUlc dre11. Enactlviat critiques
of repr�sentationali.sm are certainly
Yuu are pargjculady interested in the inst.rucli\'e, but their proposed alternative
.fit between humqn uperience and the is all tco familiar. Enactivism invites us
.{cjrntjfic yncferstandjnq ofthe wqdd �lo understand the regularity of the world.
L11->1Il...intervjew wjth Bmm /e1.:en yqu we are e�periencing a.t every moment,
dlaraccerized Che issue in cenns ofq but wichou! any point of1·eference
d.eillUm.:. "Concemporary philosophers can independent of ourselves that would give
be mrted into two basic camps: in the certamty to our descriptions and cognitive
first, there are those who wan! to explain assertions. Indeed the whole mechani sm
scien ce in cenns of human experience; ofgonerating olU'nlw•. ••describers
in �he second, there are those who want and ob#rwrl t.U. u.s dear our world. a1
to explain human experience in tenns of
the IWf'ld wldch we bring forth in our
science.../ side with those in tire second coexistence with ochers. will Always haw
camp". .1 precisely that mi.Ktw·e of regularity and
"Philosophy is not science's under-labourer" I Nikola Andonovski
it should reassert its originacy kinship way as to explain how real negabvity fuels
with the sciences and strive to push our dialeclics even as it prevents dialectics
cognitive capacities to their limits in order from incorporating its own negativity. Real
to test the grip of our organic equilibrium. negativity splits the logos from within,
Obviously, this assumes that thought can be while fI'Om without it splits signification
compelled by interests that transcend those from reality. The goal is to understand
of the organism, and this is of course an how non-conceptual negativity determines
idealist-ultimately Platonist-trope, which dialectical negation, while preventing
I not only admit but em brace , since I hold, negation in the concept from fusing with
along with Plato and Hegel, that rea) n egativity.
th e com puls ion of the concept
allows reason to incorporate �ihil Unbound.Yt:iI!l
death. But Nihil Unbound an emphatic portrayal of
only skims the surface of phjlosqphy gs qn "organon
the underlying issue: if of extinction"'..I!H. •wiu
one believes, as I do, that to know"' marked by the
the imperative to think is trauma ofextinction is
compelled by irrecusable via phjlosqphy rendered
rational obligations, commensurate with
then the acknowledgment the objective reqliw of
that the validity of the extjnction But dqes this :mrt
categories Qf sense that have qfpqsjtion not simply echo the
been available to us for two ffi:jdeqqerian pathos of tiniiude?
millennia have now lapsed irrevocably, Aren't yqu proposing here a forrn of
carries with it the injunction to transform authenticitv qfthe disappearing self. an
the structure of sense. However, I now ethics ofnihilism perhaps?
realize the issue is more dialectical than
I thought in Nihil Unbound, because the Yes and no. Yes, if by 'authenticity' one
bo undary between sense and senselessness understands the rationalist imperative
is historically determined and the formal to transform the structure of sense
strJcture of sense allows for a fundamental in accordance with the norm of truth,
reconfiguration in what can ar.d cannot according to an impersonal ideal of
be meaningfully experienced. \'lfhat is collective cognitive authenticity that would
conspicuously absent from Nihil Unbound, be Hegelian rather than Heideggerian.
but what I am currently trying to elaborate, No, if 'authenticity' is understood in a
is an account of the generative status of personal-existential register in terms of
the negative that would not lapse back the ontological propriety of the individual
into some sort of dubious emanationism. self. Extinction is not just the cosmological
The problem consists in articulating the transcoding of Heideggerian finitude, but
relation between the dialectical structure its speculative sublation in the form of a
of conceptual discourse and tl:e non· new synthesis of thought and object, or
dialectical status of the real, in such a subject and death-a dead subject. This
"Phi/osophy is not science's under-labourer" I Nikola Andonovsk1
I mean by 'binding extinction'. But such µrc·ject. Sellars helped m e realize ht at the
binding can only be collectively realized at a utanomy of concept1ial r ti nality is the
a o
the level of rational reflection, this being indispensable precondition for defending
understood not in terms of individual the truth of nihilism and hence for
consciousness, but as the conceptual prosecuting the kind of radical conceptual
explicitation of the implicit content of revision which I believe nihilism entails.
impersonal rational norms. (I What is most important for me in
owe this insight to Robert Sellars' thought, but what
Brandom's bri lliantly Because I'm s ti l trying to properly
l
reconstructive reading of grasp, is his two-tiered
Hegel.I The suggestion it's not - <
account of lhe relation
is that the 'subject be�ween mind
of-death' emerges possible to carry o" and world. What
as the historically prevents Sellars'
appropriate fonn
on making sense i:f rejection of the
for contemporary
ourselves or the wor.f, give11 from l psi ng
a
rational collectivity. into conceptual
How this 'subject in the way we haV< idealism is his
of-death' might be difficult but crucial
collectively realized been for the past t ; ' account of the
as a new form of interp:ay between
reason is what I am and half thousan - the nonnative,
currently trying to
years. rule-governed
elaborate by examining do main of linguistic
what Hegel. Sellars, and signification and t e causal/
h
Brandom have to say about the neurophysiolog1cal dimension of
link between reason, nature, and history. what Brandom calls 'reliable differential
responsive disposilions' Like Kant before
In the pas! few years you have been him. Sellars synthesizes iflsights from
jncreasinalv engaged with the work of rationalism and empiricism. His e mph asis
Wilfrid Sellars. Whv is he so important for on the autonomy of the conceptual aligns
your developing system' And concurrentlv him with rationalism, but it is tempered
what is vour take on the possjble by a n.aturall1ttc acknowledgement of' the
jdealistic resonances pf Sellars' rejectjon mind's evolved. status. This has important
of the 'given'? How dq YW combjne the conaequences for his conception of
unaYDidable entrapment jn discourse truth. Sellars believes it i.s possCble to
with the claim that vqu've defended sq 111concile truth u cohMmce, wbich. in his
qdqmantly: the .<:rienti6c rmcl'lw�rinq of system amounts to rationally warranted
= assertibility, with truth as correspondence,
whic:h he describes in terms of the relation
and the empirical events or objects to the latter. Thus I wholeheartedly applaud
which they are causally connected and Meillassoux's attempt to wake continental
which the signifying counterparts of these philosophers from their "correlationist
natural linguistic objects are about. Thus, slumber"'. But I think it would be a grave
Sellars maintains, one can dispense with mistake to throw out the baby of Critique
any invocat.ion of the empirically given with the correlaUonlst bathwater. In fact,
while preserving the representational I think the proper import of the criUque
l1nlr. between linguistic assenion and of correlationls.m. has been misunderstood
empirical reality. Obviously I'm caricaturing (perhaps even by Meillassoux himself'?). In
what is in fact an exceptionally subtle my eyes, it is not Kant but rather the neo
and complex theory, but I take Sellars' pragmatist and post-Heideggerian strains
crucial proposal to be that it is possible of contemporary anti-Kantianism that
to abjure all recourse to the given while e:r.emplify what is most objectionable about
acknowledging the mind's determination correlationism.
by the physical order. I hope to be able After Finitude is a philosophical
to do justice to the power and subtlety intervention, not a historical treatise,
of Sellars' thought in the future, if only
• and so to complain that its acco:ant of
to amend for my woefully inadequate post·ICantian philosophy is somewhat
treatment of him in Nihil Unbound. He is cavalier would be to completely miss the
an extraordinary philosopher and the full point. Ne-.rertheless. it would be fair to say
extent of his philosophical achievement has that the book is not sufficiently attentive
yet to be realized. to the question that precipitated Critical
philosophy-namely, "'What is the root
The critjcism ofspegdatjve realism yery of the relation between represenration
often revplves ground q sinalr issue the and rea: lity ?" This inattentiveness tends
jdg that the general qntjpqrhy towards to vitiate the credibility of Meillassoux'
'cqnylatjqnism' mtqjk a cqnmmjtant own speculative solution to the problem of
qntipqthy tqwqrds qny fcmn. qfcritjque ancestralit7, given that the latter essentially
0 prjq that many mnfemPPD1Cf recapitulates Kant's original question, viz.,
philmqphers are unwilling to PR¥i Whqt "How is mathematized natural science able
Y vpyr yjew on this? ls the prniect of to tell the truth about reality?" I now believe
'df:Cranscmcfenrqlization' in danger pf that Kant's 'weak' or purely epistemic
resrqring mme sort ofmeculatjye naiyetj? correlationism is, ironically enough, far
stronser than its 'strong correlationist'
I fiadthe e xpr ession'speculativ e realism' successor, which presumes to be able to
increasingly meaningless. What I admire dispense with the problem of the 'in·itselr
llhout lhllluoaux'1,,,.. l'UUlua lo altogether. In this regard, Sellars' critical
tb1 ch.U.... It Hto out to =tinomlal reconstru::tion of Kantianism is exemplary
phllmoph1rw wha think bnt :wahwcl th1 precisely insofar as it revises Kant's 'weak'
'-•of the relo!loo - pbllooophy empirical realism by according science
ud. Iha nalllnll Kl.1m.CH and wha cam:mu. access to noumena, while avoiding the
la lnwb Kant .. tblr mKU9 rar lamriDI difficulties that dog Meillassoux's own
"Philosophy is not setence's under-la.bcJurer· /Niko/a Ardonovski