Progress Isn’t Just Criticism But Creativity ("Realism & Philosophy's Future" Part 2), Composing, 25/10/2013

My essay “Realism and Philosophy’s Future,” discussed yesterday, included another element aside from my critique of Graham Harman’s philosophy. This other element I consider the most important takeaway from the essay: it lays out a vision for what precisely is philosophical progress. Harman’s thought basically becomes a case to clarify precisely what my conception of progress is. 

Here’s how it works in “Realism and Philosophy’s Future,” on which, despite a very bad start to the day, I’ve actually finished my post-review edits Thursday night. It’s basically a case study of the speculative realists, particularly Harman and Levi Bryant, contrasting their approaches to philosophy to illustrate a conception of philosophical progress that, in this essay at least, has two elements. 1) A social conception of progress, having the personal confidence and originality in thought to move beyond your influences. Take me, for example. My own work is significantly influenced by that of  Gilles Deleuze, but I don’t like to call myself Deleuzian, and I don’t think there’s a single true perspective his writings generate that constitute the only genuine philosophical problems. Essentially, a socially progressive philosopher is a Young Hegelian, and a socially conservative philosopher is an Old Hegelian. 2) What I’ve called in the new version of the essay a conceptual conception of progress. Yes, I know it’s a little silly. But this is basically about having that originality of thought to move beyond your influences in the first place, identifying the limits of their own thinking and what has changed in the world between their time and yours which changes how you engage with philosophy.

This was the second rejection the essay had received. I had originally sent it to a top journal specializing in Continental philosophy, but within a couple of days of my sending it, the editor wrote me a very kind email saying he liked “Realism and Philosophy’s Future” very much, but that it wasn’t really in their remit, and recommended I send it to a cultural studies journal. I received the rejection from that cultural studies journal Tuesday, which included a pretty thorough critique. Aside from the usual kinds of recommendations (ex. more direct quotations instead of paraphrases) was the suggestion that I cut the conception of progress, along with major references to the other speculative realists, and make this an essay solely about critiquing Harman. 

I simply do not want to do that. It’s a matter of my own philosophical priorities. I don’t just want my publications to be grist for the mill of critique upon critique upon critique. I don’t consider it progressive for philosophy to consist of people arguing against each other ad infinitum over smaller and smaller scopes. I explained earlier this week that this approach to scholarship is a major element of what drove me away from philosophy of mind. I never conceived of this essay as a list of why Graham Harman is wrong about stuff. 

It's fascinating what Google Image Search will turn up when
you search one-word concepts like 'conformity.' I find it
remarkable that in a culture where we praise rebels and an
evolutionary science that stresses the importance of
mutation for adaptation and survival, we encourage
conformity and quietude within our institutions like the
academy. Intellectual history is a study of mutants and
innovators, yet our education system discourages
mutation and innovation.

I composed “Realism and Philosophy’s Future” as an engagement with the speculative realists as a case study in figuring out what separates good philosophy from bad, what delineates a living, vibrant tradition of thought from a snake that eats itself tail-first. This is a continual problem for the discipline of philosophy, especially given how integrated it is today with cultural norms of disciplinary fragmentation, and undermining the confidence of young researchers in their originality. The worst feedback I’ve always had on my work is advice to think smaller, to produce nice ordinary essays that touch on a single topic in a single sub-discipline. That’s never been how I approached philosophy, and I’ll never approach it that way. I write like the people I think make valuable contributions to the tradition because I want to make valuable contributions to the tradition myself. I don’t think this is an illegitimate goal for a young writer to have.

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This isn’t the first time I’ve taken issue with a peer reviewer before, although as far as "Realism and Philosophy's Future" is concerned, I'm just going to send it to a different journal next week. For my essay in Doctor Who and Philosophy on the Doctor as a Nietzschean Übermensch, one of the three reviewers said I had misread Nietzsche: The Übermensch was a revival of the ancient Greek strong man, he said. 

When I sent the editors my pre-publication revisions, I told them I wouldn’t follow the recommendations of that reviewer because he was wrong. Nietzsche is very clear that you can’t go back to the uncomplicated strong man who takes what he wants. Such a figure is always vulnerable to attacks by the morality of self-hatred and resentment, so the new strong man has to incorporate noble versions of the virtues of forgiveness and generosity into his values to protect himself from reactionary Christianity. I explained my case clearly to the editors, and they agreed with me to dismiss the critiques of reviewer #2. 

When I take a stand in my profession, it’s on the merits of my work, talent, and knowledge. On those grounds, if I’m engaging with people who respect hard work, talent, and knowledge, I win.

Revising "Realism and Philosophy's Future," Part 1, Composing, 24/10/2013

I got a rejection notice from a journal today, regarding an essay I had written earlier this year. It was with a very critical peer reviewer’s report, but I can actually answer the critiques with a little effort, so I started working on those revisions today. I expect them to be finished by Monday at the latest, at which point my only problem is working out what kind of journal would accept the essay. If any of my regular readers (or anyone with a perspective and the reasons to back it up) have any recommendations for journals that might make a good venue, please leave a comment on the post, message me on facebook, or tweet at me.

The essay itself is “Realism and Philosophy’s Future: Can Object-Oriented Ontology Progress the Discipline of Philosophy?” and like most of my projects, it has a bit of a history. I first became aware of a group of philosophers called speculative realists when I was finishing up my doctoral dissertation from my friend B. I had actually read a book by a member of this group when it first came out in 2009, long before I knew about his affiliation: Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude. I found it a very interesting book, and incorporated some of his ideas about the nature of contingency into my ecophilosophy project. But when I looked into the rest of the group, I became a little disappointed.

B first spoke about them as if they were a fairly unified group of philosophers working on creating a new approach to metaphysical realism, the idea that we don’t encounter representations of the world, but the actual objects of the world themselves. To a degree, that’s true. But their measure of success in achieving this goal isn’t quite up to where I think it can be. “Realism and Philosophy’s Future” focusses on the group’s (possibly now formerly) de facto leader Graham Harman, and critiques some of the problems of his philosophy. 

What I find ironic about Heidegger. He frequently discussed
how the next generation of philosophers should move
past him, because he only diagnosed the problems of
philosophy as it was at the time. Yet his followers seem
incapable of moving beyond his ideas.

In short form, Harman sees speculative realism as his own project, Object-Oriented Ontology. You might think this is some kind of scientifically-inspired realism, which I did when I first heard the term. But it’s actually an extension of Heidegger’s ontology, an affiliation that Harman embraces, calling Heidegger among the greatest philosophers who ever lived, and dismissing as utterly irrelevant every other tradition of philosophy that arose in the 20th century. He and I were already off to a bad start.

Essentially, he interprets Heidegger as distinguishing the object as it exists in relation with other objects, including perceivers (the sensual object), from the object as it truly is (the real object), which is utterly inaccessible to perception, experience, and thought. Yet the real object is the necessary foundation of objects in relations. But we’re unable to say anything about such real objects, precisely because they withdraw from any relations with us or anything else. Knowledge of sensual objects isn’t real knowledge, because it’s only the knowledge of an object as it is in relations, not as it is in itself. His books over the last few years have been increasingly desperate attempts to move his philosophy past this impasse. But they all fail. “Realism and Philosophy’s Future” calls him on this, and basically says that following Harman’s ideas leads to dead ends not only for speculative realism, but for philosophy more generally.

To be continued on Friday . . .