~ MIMESIS INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHY n. 6 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX BECOMIN'G Edited by Anna Longo INTERNATIONAL BM0682892 © 2014 - Mimesi s International www.mimesisinternational.com e-mail: [email protected] Book series: Philosophy, n. 6 Isbn 9788857523866 © MIM Edizioni Sri P.I. c.F. 0241937030 CONTENTS Quentin Meillassoux TIME WITHOUT BECOMING 7 Anna Longo THE CONTINGENT EMERGENCE OF THOUGHT 31 QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX TIMEWITHOUT BECOMING 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 TIME WITHOUT BECOMING1 1 would like, first of aIl, to say that l'm very happy to have the opportunity to discuss my work here at Middlesex University, and l' d like to express my thanks to the organiz ers of this conference, especially to Peter Hallward and Ray Brassier. 1 am going to expound and set out the fundamental deci sions of After Finitude, specifically concerning the two fun damental notions 1 tried to elaborate in this book: that of "correlationism" and that of "the principle of factiality". 1. Correlationism 1 call "correlationism" the contemporary opponent of any realism. Correlationism takes many contemporary fonns, but particularly those of transcendental philosophy, the varieties of phenomenology, and post-modernism. But although these currents are aIl extraordinarily varied in themselves, they aIl share, according to l1le, a l110re or less explicit decision: that there are no objects, no events, no laws, no beings which are not always already correlated with a point of view, with a subjective access. Anyone rnaintaining the contrary, i.e. that it is possible to attain something like a reality in itself, exist ing absolutely independently of his viewpoint, or his catego ries, or his epoch, or his culture, or his language, etc., this persan would be exemplarily naïve, or if you prefer: a realist, "Time without becoming" is the text of the talk that Quentin Meil lassoux gave at the Middlesex University, London, 8 May 2008. 10 Time Without Becoming a metaphysician, a quaintly dogmatic philosopher. With the term of "correlationism" , 1 wanted to set out the basic argu ment of these "philosophies of access" - to use Graham Har man 's expression - but also - and 1 insist on this point the exceptional strength of its antirealist argurnentation, which is apparently so desperately implacable. Correlationism rests on an argument as simple as powerful, and which can be for mulated in this way: there can be no X without a givenness of X, and no theory about X without a positing of X. If you speak about something, the correlationist will say, you speak about something that is given to you, and posited by you. The argument for this thesis is as sirrlple to formulate as it is diffi cult to refute: it can be called the "argument from the cirde", and consists in remarking that every objection against cor relationism is an objection produced by your thinking, and so dependent upon it. When you speak against correlation, you forget that you speak against correlation, hence from the viewpoint of your own mind, or culture, or epoch, etc. The cirde means that there is a vicious cirde in any naïve real ism, a performative contradiction through which you refute what you say or think by your very act of saying it or think ing it. 1 think there are two principal versions of correlationism: a transcendental one, which daims that there are sorne uni versaI forms of the subjective knowledge of things, and the post-modern one, which denies the existence of any such subjective universality. But in both cases there is a denial of an absolute knowledge - 1 mean a knowledge of the thing in itself independently of our subjective access to it. Conse quently, for correlationists the sentence "X is", means "X is the correlate of thinking" - thinking in the Cartesian sense - that is: X is the correlate of an affection, or a perception, or a conception, or of any other subjective or intersubjective act. To be is to be a correlate, the terrn of a correlation. And when you daim to think any specific X, yon must posit this X, which you cannot separate from this specific act of positing. This is why it is impossible to conceive an absolute X, i.e.