After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
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'Rarely do we encounter a book which not only meets the highest standards of thinking, but sets up itself new standards, transforming the entire field into which it intervenes. Quentin Meillassoux does exactly this.' --Slavoj Zizek
'A penetrating critique of the post-Kantian "correlationism" that has dominated philosophy on the European mainland over the last 250 years.' --Times Literary Supplement
'A penetrating critique of the post-Kantian "correlationism" that has dominated philosophy on the European mainland over the last 250 years.' --Times Literary Supplement
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This book is now available for the first time in paperback, the remarkable debut of a former student of Alain Badiou. Quentin Meillassoux, a former student of Alain Badiou, is considered to be one of the most talented and exciting new voices in contemporary French philosophy. Quentin Meillassoux's remarkable debut makes a strikingly original contribution to contemporary French philosophy and is set to have a significant impact on the future of Continental philosophy. Written in a style that marries great clarity of expression with argumentative rigour, "After Finitude" provides bold readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a devastating critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy. Meillassoux introduces a startlingly novel philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique. "After Finitude" proposes a new alliance between philosophy and science and calls for an unequivocal halt to the creeping return of religiosity in contemporary philosophical discourse. The exceptional lucidity and the centrality of argument in Meillassoux's writing should appeal to Analytic as well as Continental philosophers, while his critique of fideism will be of interest to anyone preoccupied by the relation between philosophy, theology and religion.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I just noticed the recent review and figured Meillassoux's great little book deserves a little bit more credit. The book sets out Meillassoux's thinking beginning with his (somewhat infamous) anti-correlationism and moving on to the development of the principle of unreason. I think the influence this book is having is subtle, but will become more obvious in the next few years (especially among the young). If you came to this page because you are interested in speculative realism then you MUST buy this book. Otherwise I'd say take a gamble on it - nobody I know who has read it weren't at least intrigued by his arguments.
Format:Paperback
Meillassoux pulls the rug from beneath the feet of the prevaling correlationists (Kant to Heidegger); and in so doing he demonstrates how anthropomorphism is redundant.
He absolutizes the contingency of being; that what is absolute is the `there is' which is meaninglessness, since things `are' whether a reasoning being is there verifying this or not. The only absolute is that everything merely `is' which is to say that there is no meaning for anything to be the way it is because ` meaning' already implies an originary consciousness whose existence is actually anterior and contingent
Leibniz said: everything must exist `for' a reason - Meillassoux says: everthing must exist for `no' reason precisely because the coming into being of life was not simultaneous with the coming into being of the universe: this means that the uprising of life was a matter of contingency, not necessity. This is why the only necessity for Meillassoux is such contingency p.34
Perhaps this will become the 21st century's equivalent to Being and Time
He absolutizes the contingency of being; that what is absolute is the `there is' which is meaninglessness, since things `are' whether a reasoning being is there verifying this or not. The only absolute is that everything merely `is' which is to say that there is no meaning for anything to be the way it is because ` meaning' already implies an originary consciousness whose existence is actually anterior and contingent
Leibniz said: everything must exist `for' a reason - Meillassoux says: everthing must exist for `no' reason precisely because the coming into being of life was not simultaneous with the coming into being of the universe: this means that the uprising of life was a matter of contingency, not necessity. This is why the only necessity for Meillassoux is such contingency p.34
Perhaps this will become the 21st century's equivalent to Being and Time
7 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a very recent book setting out Quentin Meillassoux's new philosophy which explains how we can know anything about events before there were any humans or after they have all become extinct, which he considers to be a problem. He solves it by, he believes, proving that everything is contingent, that is happens for no reason and not subject to any laws of nature which he believes don't exist. He is attacking such philosophies as phenomenalism which believe that all reality requires human or other perception to exist at all. He is very learned and argues very cogently for his philosophy but I think that Anglo-saxon philosophers will not see what he regards as a problem as really being one requiring dispensing with all natural laws.
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