It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account ...of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything (the world). He argues that the concept of existence is incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics.
This paper explores a set of dilemmas associated with relational ontologies in which contingency factors prominently, raising the methodological question: how should we come to know, and trust our ...knowledge of the world? I explore distrust in science and the limits of empiricism under chaotic climatic regimes and argue that a pluralist 'multiple earth' must include mathematical fabulation and other kinds of speculative abstraction.
In Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (2008), concepts by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari intersect with the cosmic deities imagined by H.P. ...Lovecraft, occult Zoroastrian relics explain John Carpenter’s horrific science fiction imagination, and develop a most extravagant hypothesis: oil, a “tellurian entity” imprisoned in the deep layers and formations of the earth, has been waiting for a long time to be released from the depths of the earth and to spread into the atmosphere. Negarestani’s work presents oil as the real subject of history, humanity as its host, the industrial revolution as its point of no return. The esoteric allure and sophistication of the argument, set against a backdrop of conspiracy theories, draws the reader into a paranoid delusion marked by a conspiracy fomented on a quasi-cosmic scale: the burning of oil, seen as a fundamental step in its own “satanic agenda”, is the key moment from which it can spread into the atmosphere. Capitalism extended to a global scale is then seen as the most adequate solution to the uninterrupted burning of fossil fuels. In this article, we would like to reflect on the contributions of Negarestani’s work to the field of climate fictions. We will begin by presenting his geophilosophical dimension before returning in more detail to his imaginary world under the influence of an evil entity. We will then show how Cyclonopedia presents itself as a speculative climate fiction that adopts a neo-materialist perspective inspired by the approach of speculative realism.
Inspired by Q. Meillassoux's philosophy, Ikegami (2021) claims that a living system perceives external reality without ‘contracting' the overwhelming flow of information it contains. This idea ...implies that cognition is not merely the formation of representations inside a living system. Based on this idea, we can reconsider the relationship between the inside and outside of a living system: I claim that this relationship contains both disconnection and connection at the same time. Ikegami assumes that the contracting movements that occur in living systems are continuously disrupted by encounters with external reality. Furthermore, he claims that living systems ‘vividly experience' this disruption involving an overwhelming flow of information. This idea does not seem to be present in Meillassoux's philosophy.
In this paper, we trace the compounding and escalation of frames to try and encompass the reality of climate change. These frames capture significant aspects, revealing new contours and extreme ...organizational challenges. However, what if climate change is unframeable? We locate three ontological dimensions of climate change – its unboundedness, incalculability and unthinkability – that make this case. This means that climate change is not a problem that organizations can encompass, divide or draw lines around – some ‘thing’ that can be recuperated into existing institutional, infrastructural and interpersonal frameworks. Instead, it is calling forth forms of organization without any precedent. We argue that the philosophy of speculative realism, specifically the work of Quentin Meillassoux, reveals climate change as a new World for which we do not have categories. We deploy Meillassoux’s concepts which are non-human and rational to think through what climate change is ontologically. Meillassoux’s work is characterized as the reintroduction of the old philosophical idea of the absolute, and we use it as a possible way to overcome the equivocal status of climate change without succumbing to despondency and passivity. Rather than a negative, overwhelming threat, climate change gives us what we call a bleak optimism: the realization that climate change has already happened, and that human civilization must learn how to die in a way that is a creative and just foreclosure of the Earth’s organizational forms.
Introduction. In contemporary philosophy there is an emerging interest in space and time in relation to the existential-phenomenological tradition. Theoretical analysis. The article analyses some ...modern approaches to the problem of space and time in the context of the above-mentioned methodology, as well as those approaches that either stand in opposition to the phenomenological tradition or try to form the related understanding of the problem. The problematisation of space within the framework of the approach we are interested in has only been outlined in Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein. Since the emergence of speculative realism, with its inherent questioning of the possibility of thinking reality (space and time) beyond the horizon of cognitive and sensory features of human presence, the question of the relationship between being and thinking, especially in the aspect of the possibility of constructing new ontologies, sounds new in philosophy. Conclusion. The analysis of modern approaches to the problem of space and time in the context of the existential-phenomenological tradition shows that in modern philosophy the problematisation of space qualitatively complements human philosophy and develops some of its aspects.
An examination of the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani's development of political theology. Considered within the context of his involvement with a strand of contemporary philosophical thinking ...known as speculative realism, it examines Negarestani's use of Islamic referents in Cyclonopedia, a multi-layered frame story belonging to the genre of theory fiction, and in more technical-philosophical treatises. Focusing on his deployment of dissenting interpretations of the notions of taqiyya (concealment, dissimulation) and qiyama (resurrection), the resulting spatiotemporal implications are assessed by putting Negarestani in conversation with classical and contemporary Islamic and non-Muslim thinkers, theologians, and philosophers.
This paper explores the cultural operations of Zhou Ming's photography (b.1960), which was aimed at exploring the deeper changes that have gripped the unstoppable urban renewal of Shanghai. His ...photo-essay Shanghai: An Alternative View (2000-2005), showcases the absurd and incongruous organic and inorganic spaces devoted to new points of view about the ruins that lay behind an assortment of high inner-city density residential areas situated in the Zhabei, Huangpu, and Houkou districts. Zhou Ming's drive to de-humanize his apparent humanist photography through everyday objects and other signage found during his walking practices, also reveals multiple surrealist metaphoric representations between the materiality of the city and a slanted exaggeration of reality. His documentary camera sets out an ontological shift vis-à-vis the incidence of the everyday 'found objects', in which the privilege of humans over objects disappears. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the photographer's speculative aesthetics raises the need to redefine Chinese contemporary photography with theories linked to object-oriented ontologies and in general, to new materialism. This can be interpreted as a historical-cultural consolidation of media continuum that also embraces pre-photographic practices that can liberate objects and subjects from 'sensitive' content in a post-socialist reality.
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