Speculative realism

2 Variations

Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary

philosophy which denes itself loosely in its stance of
metaphysical realism against the dominant forms of postKantian philosophy (or what it terms correlationism[1] ).
Speculative realism takes its name from a conference
held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in
April 2007.[2] The conference was moderated by Alberto
Toscano of Goldsmiths College, and featured presentations by Ray Brassier of American University of Beirut
(then at Middlesex University), Iain Hamilton Grant of
the University of the West of England, Graham Harman
of the American University in Cairo, and Quentin Meillassoux of the cole Normale Suprieure in Paris. Credit
for the name speculative realism is generally ascribed to
Brassier,[3] though Meillassoux had already used the term
speculative materialism to describe his own position.[4]

While sharing in the goal of overturning the dominant

strands of post-Kantian thought in both Continental and
Analytic schools of philosophy, there are important differences separating the core members of the Speculative
Realist movement and their followers.

2.1 Speculative materialism

In his critique of correlationism, Quentin Meillassoux
nds two principles as the locus of Kants philosophy.
The rst of these is the Principle of Correlation itself,
which claims essentially that we can only know the correlate of Thought and Being, that is to say, that what
lies outside that correlate is unknowable. The second is
termed by Meillassoux the Principle of Factiality, which
states that things could be otherwise than what they are.
This principle is upheld by Kant in his defence of the
thing-in-itself as unknowable but imaginable. We can
imagine reality as being fundamentally dierent even if
we never know such a reality. According to Meillassoux,
the defence of both principles leads to weak correlationism (such as those of Kant and Husserl), while the
rejection of the thing-in-itself leads to the strong correlationism of thinkers such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger. For such strong correlationists, it makes no sense
to suppose that there is anything outside of the correlate
of Thought and Being, and so the Principle of Factiality is eliminated in favour of a strengthened Principle of
Correlation.

A second conference, entitled Speculative Realism/Speculative Materialism, took place at the UWE
Bristol on Friday 24 April 2009, two years after the
original event at Goldsmiths.[5] The line-up consisted of
Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman,
and (in place of Meillassoux who was unable to attend)
Alberto Toscano.[6]

Critique of correlationism

While often in disagreement over basic philosophical issues, the speculative realist thinkers have a shared resis- Meillassoux follows the opposite tactic in rejecting the
tance to philosophies of human nitude inspired by the Principle of Correlation for the sake of a bolstered Principle of Factiality in his post-Kantian return to Hume.
tradition of Immanuel Kant.
By arguing in favour of such a principle, Meillassoux
What unites the four core members of the movement is is led to reject the necessity not only of all physical
an attempt to overcome both "correlationism"[7] as well as laws of nature, but all logical laws with the exception
"philosophies of access". In After Finitude, Meillassoux of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (since eliminating
denes correlationism as the idea according to which we the Principle of Non-Contradiction would undermine the
only ever have access to the correlation between think- Principle of Factiality which claims that things can aling and being, and never to either term considered apart ways be otherwise than what they are). By rejecting the
from the other.[8] Philosophies of access are any of those Principle of Sucient Reason, there can be no justicaphilosophies which privilege the human being over other tion for the necessity of physical laws, meaning that while
entities. Both ideas represent forms of anthropocentrism. the universe may be ordered in such and such a way, there
All four of the core thinkers within Speculative Realism is no reason it could not be otherwise. Meillassoux rework to overturn these forms of philosophy which privi- jects the Kantian a priori in favour of a Humean a priori,
lege the human being, favouring distinct forms of realism claiming that the lesson to be learned from Hume on the
against the dominant forms of idealism in much of con- subject of causality is that "the same cause may actually
bring about 'a hundred dierent events (and even many
temporary philosophy.
1

2 VARIATIONS

more).[9]

2.2

Object-oriented philosophy

The central tenet of object-oriented ontology (OOO) is

that objects have been given short shrift for too long in
philosophy in favour of more radical approaches. Graham Harman has classied these forms of radical philosophy as those that either try to undermine objects
by saying that objects are simply supercial crusts to a
deeper underlying reality, either in the form of monism
or a perpetual ux, or those that try to overmine objects by saying that the idea of a whole object is a form
of folk ontology, that there is no underlying object beneath either the qualities (e.g. there is no apple, only
red, hard, etc.) or the relations (as in both Latour
and Whitehead, the former claiming that an object is only
what it modies, transforms, perturbs, or creates[10] ).
OOO is notable for not only its critique of forms of antirealism, but other forms of realism as well. Harman has
even claimed that the term realism will soon no longer
be a relevant distinction within philosophy as the factions
within Speculative Realism grow in number. As such, he
has already written pieces dierentiating his own OOO
from other forms of realism which he claims are not realist enough as they reject objects as useless ctions.
According to Harman, everything is an object, whether
it be a mailbox, electromagnetic radiation, curved
spacetime, the Commonwealth of Nations, or a
propositional attitude; all things, whether physical or ctional, are equally objects. Expressing strong sympathy
for panpsychism, Harman proposes a new philosophical
discipline called speculative psychology dedicated
to investigating the cosmic layers of psyche and
ferreting out the specic psychic reality of earthworms,
dust, armies, chalk, and stone.[11]
Harman defends a version of the Aristotelian notion of
substance. Unlike Leibniz, for whom there were both
substances and aggregates, Harman maintains that when
objects combine, they create new objects. In this way,
he defends an a priori metaphysics that claims that reality
is made up only of objects and that there is no bottom
to the series of objects. In contrast to many other versions of substance, Harman also maintains that it need
not be considered eternal, but as Aristotle maintained,
substances can both come to be and pass away. For Harman, an object is in itself an innite recess, unknowable
and inaccessible by any other thing. This leads to his account of what he terms vicarious causality. Inspired by
the occasionalists of Medieval Islamic Philosophy, Harman maintains that no two objects can ever interact save
through the mediation of a sensual vicar.[12] There are
two types of objects, then, for Harman: real objects and
the sensual objects that allow for interaction. The former
are the things of everyday life, while the latter are the caricatures that mediate interaction. For example, when re
burns cotton, Harman argues that the re does not touch

the essence of that cotton which is inexhaustible by any

relation, but that the interaction is mediated by a caricature of the cotton which causes it to burn.

2.3 Transcendental materialism / neovitalism

Iain Hamilton Grant argues against what he terms somatism, the philosophy and physics of bodies. In his
Philosophies of Nature After Schelling, Grant tells a new
history of philosophy from Plato onward based on the
denition of matter. Aristotle distinguished between
Form and Matter in such a way that Matter was invisible to philosophy, whereas Grant argues for a return to
the Platonic Matter as not only the basic building blocks
of reality, but the forces and powers that govern our reality. He traces this same argument to the post-Kantian
German Idealists Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, claiming that the distinction
between Matter as substantive versus useful ction persists to this day and that we should end our attempts to
overturn Plato and instead attempt to overturn Kant and
return to speculative physics in the Platonic tradition,
that is, not a physics of bodies, but a physics of the All.
Eugene Thacker has examined how the concept of life
itself is both determined within regional philosophy and
also how life itself comes to acquire metaphysical properties. Thackers book After Life shows how the ontology of life operates by way of a split between Life and
the living, making possible a metaphysical displacement in which life is thought via another metaphysical term, such as time, form, or spirit: Every ontology of life thinks of life in terms of something-otherthan-life...that something-other-than-life is most often a
metaphysical concept, such as time and temporality, form
and causality, or spirit and immanence[13] Thacker traces
this theme from Aristotle, to Scholasticism and mysticism/negative theology, to Spinoza and Kant, showing
how this three-fold displacement is also alive in philosophy today (life as time in process philosophy and
Deleuzianism, life as form in biopolitical thought, life as
spirit in post-secular philosophies of religion). Thacker
examines the relation of speculative realism to the ontology of life, arguing for a vitalist correlation": Let us say
that a vitalist correlation is one that fails to conserve the
correlationist dual necessity of the separation and inseparability of thought and object, self and world, and which
does so based on some ontologized notion of 'life'.[14] Ultimately Thacker argues for a skepticism regarding life":
Life is not only a problem of philosophy, but a problem
for philosophy.[13]
Other thinkers have emerged within this group, united
in their allegiance to what has been known as process
philosophy, rallying around such thinkers as Schelling,
Bergson, Whitehead, and Deleuze, among others. A recent example is found in Steven Shaviro's book With-

3
out Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics,
which argues for a process-based approach that entails
panpsychism as much as it does vitalism or animism. For
Shaviro, it is Whiteheads philosophy of prehensions and
nexus that oers the best combination of continental and
analytical philosophy. Another recent example is found
in Jane Bennetts book Vibrant Matter,[15] which argues
for a shift from human relations to things, to a vibrant
matter that cuts across the living and non-living, human
bodies and non-human bodies. Leon Niemoczynski, in
his book 'Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature,' invokes what he calls speculative naturalism so as to argue that nature can aord lines of insight into its own innitely productive vibrant ground,
which he identies as natura naturans.

with pan-psychist metaphysics and morsels of

process philosophy. I don't believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable
to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students.
I agree with Deleuzes remark that ultimately
the most basic task of philosophy is to impede
stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in
a movement whose most signal achievement
thus far is to have generated an online orgy of
stupidity.

4 Publications
2.4

Transcendental nihilism / methodologSpeculative Realism has close ties to the journal Collapse,
ical naturalism

which published the proceedings of the inaugural conference at Goldsmiths and has featured numerous other
articles by 'speculative realist' thinkers; as has the academic journal Pli, which is edited and produced by
members of the Graduate School of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Warwick. The journal Speculations, founded in 2010 published by Punctum
books, regularly features articles related to Speculative
Realism. Edinburgh University Press publishes a book
series called Speculative Realism.

In Nihil Unbound: Extinction and Enlightenment, Ray

Brassier maintains that philosophy has avoided the traumatic idea of extinction, instead attempting to nd meaning in a world conditioned by the very idea of its own annihilation. Thus Brassier critiques both the phenomenological and hermeneutic strands of continental philosophy
as well as the vitality of thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, who
work to ingrain meaning in the world and stave o the
threat of nihilism. Instead, drawing on thinkers such as
Alain Badiou, Franois Laruelle, Paul Churchland, and The following is a list of publications associated with
Thomas Metzinger, Brassier defends a view of the world Speculative Realism:
as inherently devoid of meaning. That is, rather than
avoiding nihilism, Brassier embraces it as the truth of re Brassier, Ray, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harality. Brassier concludes from his readings of Badiou and
man, and Quentin Meillassoux. 2007. Speculative
Laruelle that the universe is founded on the nothing,[16]
Realism in Collapse III: Unknown Deleuze. Lonbut also that philosophy is the organon of extinction,
don: Urbanomic.
that it is only because life is conditioned by its own ex Brassier, Ray. 2007. Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment
tinction that there is thought at all.[17] Brassier then deand Extinction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
fends a radically anti-correlationist philosophy proposing
that Thought is conjoined not with Being, but with Non Brassier, Ray. 2007. The Enigma of Realism
Being.
in Collapse II: Speculative Realism. London: Urbanomic.

Controversy regarding the existence of a speculative realist

movement

In an interview with Kronos magazine published in March

2011, Ray Brassier denied that there is any such thing
as a speculative realist movement and rmly distanced
himself from those who continue to attach themselves to
the brand name:[18]
The speculative realist movement exists
only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers
promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever: actor-network theory spiced

Brassier, Ray. 2001. Behold the Non-Rabbit:

Kant, Quine, Laruelle in Pli 12: Materialism.
Braver, Lee. 2007. A Thing of This World: A
History of Continental Anti-Realism. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
Bryant, Levi. 2014. Onto-Cartography: An Ontology of Machines and Media. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Bryant, Levi, Graham Harman, and Nick Srnicek
(eds.). 2011. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: Re-Press.
Ennis, Paul J. 2011. Continental Realism. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.

7
Ennis, Paul J. 2010. Post-Continental Voice: Selected
Interviews. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.

REFERENCES

5 Internet presence

Grant, Iain Hamilton. 2008. Philosophies of Nature Speculative Realism is notable for its fast expansion via
the Internet in the form of blogs.[19] Web sites have
After Schelling. London: Continuum.
formed as resources for essays, lectures, and planned fu Grant, Iain Hamilton. 2008. Being and Slime: ture books by those within the Speculative Realist moveThe Mathematics of Protoplasm in Lorenz Okens ment. Many other blogs have emerged with original ma'Physio-Philosophy'" in Collapse IV: Concept- terial on Speculative realism or expanding on its themes
Horror. London: Urbanomic.
and ideas, and podcasts featuring various speculative re Grant, Iain Hamilton. 2005. The 'Eternal and Nec- alists have also appeared online.
essary Bond Between Philosophy and Physics" in
Angelaki 10.1.
Grant, Iain Hamilton. 2000. The Chemistry of
Darkness in Pli 9: Science.
Harman, Graham. 2011, 2015. Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Harman, Graham. 2011. The Quadruple Object.
Winchester, UK: Zero Books.
Harman, Graham. 2010. Circus Philosophicus.
Winchester, UK: Zero Books.
Harman, Graham. 2010. Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures. Winchester, UK: Zero
Books.
Harman, Graham. 2009. Prince of Networks: Bruno
Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: Re.Press.
Harman, Graham. 2008. On the Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl in Collapse IV:
Concept-Horror. London: Urbanomic.
Harman, Graham. 2007. On Vicarious Causation
in Collapse II: Speculative Realism. London: Urbanomic.
Harman, Graham. 2005. Guerilla Metaphysics:
Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things.
Chicago: Open Court.

6 See also

New realism in contemporary philosophy

7 References
[1] Mackay, Robin (March 2007). Editorial Introduction.
Collapse. 2 (1): 313.
[2] Brassier, Ray, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and
Quentin Meillassoux. 2007. Speculative Realism in
Collapse III: Unknown Deleuze. London: Urbanomic.
[3] Graham Harman, brief SR/OOO tutorial.
[4] Graham Harman, brief SR/OOO tutorial.
[5] Mark Fisher, Speculative Realism, Frieze.
[6] Mark Fisher, Speculative Realism, Frieze.
[7] Mackay, Robin (March 2007). Editorial Introduction.
Collapse. 2 (1): 313.
[8] Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude, 5.
[9] Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude, 90.
[10] Graham Harman, Prince of Networks, 95.
[11] Graham Harman, Prince of Networks, 213.

Harman, Graham. 2002. Tool-Being: Heidegger

and the Metaphysics of Objects. Chicago: Open [12] Graham Harman, On Vicarious Causality, 201.
Court
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2008. After Finitude: An
Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Trans. Ray
Brassier. London: Continuum.
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2008. Spectral Dilemma
in Collapse IV: Concept-Horror. London: Urbanomic.
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2007. Subtraction and
Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence and Matter and
Memory in Collapse III: Unknown Deleuze. London: Urbanomic.

[13] Thacker, After Life, p. x.

[14] Thacker, After Life, p. 254.

[15] Bennett, Jane (2010). Vibrant matter a political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN
9780822346197.
[16] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 148-149.
[17] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 223-226, 234-238.
[18] Ray Brassier interviewed by Marcin Rychter "I am a nihilist because I still believe in truth", Kronos, March 4,
2011

Meillassoux, Quentin. 2007. Potentiality and Virtuality in Collapse II: Speculative Realism. London: [19] Fabio Gironi, 'Science-Laden Theory, Speculations 1, p.
21.
Urbanomic.

External links
Pierre-Alexandre Fradet and Tristan Garcia
(eds.), issue Ralisme spculatif, in Spirale, no 255, winter 2016 -- introduction
here :
"https://www.academia.edu/20381265/
With_Tristan_Garcia_Petit_panorama_
du_ralisme_spculatif_in_Spirale_num.
_255_winter_2016_p._27-30_online_http_
magazine-spirale.com_dossier-magazine_
petit-panorama-du-realisme-speculatif
Collapse a journal featuring contributions by
speculative realists
Quentin Meillassoux in English at the Speculative
Realism Conference Recording of Quentin Meillassouxs lecture in English at the inaugural Speculative
Realism conference
The Speculative Realism Pathnder
Post-Continental Voices - an edited collection of interviews that contains interviews with speculative realists.

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