Quentin Meillassoux

After Finitude provides readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy. Author Quentin Meillassoux introduces a 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.

An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency

After Finitude

A meticulous literary study, a detective story à la Edgar Allen Poe, a treasure hunt worthy of an adventure novel – such are the registers in which will be deciphered the hidden secrets of a poem like no other. Quentin Meillassoux continues his innovative philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, infinity and eternity through a concentrated study of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Un Coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard, patiently deciphering its enigmatic meaning on the basis of a dazzlingly simple and lucid insight with regard to ‘the unique Number that cannot be another’. The Coup de dés constitutes perhaps the most radical break in the history of modern poetry: the fractured lines spanning the double pa≥ the typographical play borrowed from the poster form; the multiple interpolations disrupting reading. But the intrigue of this poem is still stranger and has always resisted full elucidation. We encounter a shipwreck, and a Master, himself almost submerged, who clasps in his hand the dice that, confronted by the furious waves, he hesitates to throw. The hero expects this throw, if it takes place, to be extraordinarily important: a Number said to be ‘unique’ and which ‘cannot be any other’. The decisive point of the investigation proposed by Meillassoux comes with a discovery, unsettling and yet as simple as a child’s game: All the dimensions of the Number, understood progressively, articulate between them but a sole condition – that this Number should ultimately be delivered to us by a secret code, hidden in the Coup de dés, like a key that finally unlocks every one of its poetic devices. Thus is also unveiled the meaning of the siren that emerges for a lightning flash among the debris of the shipwreck: as the living heart of a drama that is still unfolding. With this bold new interpretation of Mallarmé’s work, The Number and the Siren offers provocative insights into modernity, poetics, secularism and religion, and opens a new chapter in Meillassoux’s philosophy of radical contingency.

A Decipherment of Mallarmé's Coup de Dés

The Number and the Siren

Isaac Asimov

Alyosha Edlebi

Science fiction and extro-science fiction. Followed by "The billiard ball" by Isaac Asimov

Bilimkurgu ve Bilimdışı Kurmaca

In Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction, Quentin Meillassoux addresses the problem of chaos and of the constancy of natural laws in the context of literature. With his usual argumentative rigor, he elucidates the distinction between science fiction, a genre in which science remains possible in spite of all the upheavals that may attend the world in which the tale takes place, and fiction outside-science, the literary concept he fashions in this book, a fiction in which science becomes impossible. With its investigations of the philosophies of Hume, Kant, and Popper, Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction broadens the inquiry that Meillassoux began in After Finitude, thinking through the concrete possibilities and consequences of a chaotic world in which human beings can no longer resort to science to ground their existence. It is a significant milestone in the work of an emerging philosopher, which will appeal to readers of both philosophy and literature. The text is followed by Isaac Asimov’s essay “The Billiard Ball.”

Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard est composé par Mallarmé, dans sa version finale, en 1898, l’année même de sa mort. Le poème constitue l’une des ruptures littéraires les plus radicales de la modernité : lignes éclatées sur tout l’espace de la double page, jeu sur la taille des caractères empruntant au procédé des affiches, multiplication des incises qui déroutent la lecture. Mais son énigme la plus profonde tient peut-être à son contenu : une intrigue, à peine suggérée, dont le sens, l’étrangeté continuent aujourd’hui d’échapper à une pleine élucidation. L’hypothèse de Quentin Meillassoux consiste à affirmer que Mallarmé a caché dans son poème un mètre secret, un Nombre unique, qui devait permettre de réinventer une poésie à la fois moderne et toujours liée à l’antique règle du décompte. Une investigation est alors menée, qui tient à la fois de l’étude littéraire, de la chasse au trésor et de l’enquête policière à la Edgar Poe. On y découvre progressivement que le Nombre n’est autre que la somme des mots du poème et que cette idée – apparemment fantaisiste – devait pourtant être à la source, pour Mallarmé, d’un geste poétique révolutionnaire et d’une rigueur sans pareille.

Quentin Meillassoux

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