Original

Nihil Unbound Enlightenment and Extinction

Ray Brassier — 2007

Where much contemporary philosophy seeks to stave off the "threat" of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning--characterized as the defining feature of human existence--from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment, this book attempts to push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by forging a link between revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy and anti-phenomenological realism in recent French philosophy. Contrary to an emerging "post-analytic" consensus which would bridge the analytic-continental divide by uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against the twin perils of scientism and skepticism, this book short-circuits both traditions by plugging eliminative materialism directly into speculative realism.

Reviews

Ghee@clubsoda

"since copernicus, man has been rolling from the centre toward X."

ray brassier's core theses: the post-copernican enlightenment shattering the great chain of being is good, actually. the nihilism of our condition is not a quandry, but in fact a speculative opportunity.

first, brassier considers the sellarsian manifest and scientific image, cutting through them via churchland's neurocomputational model

then, adorno and horkheimer are brought to the fore, highlighting the relation between nature and reason. "man" is unmasked, human reason is an insect's waking dream

third, by way of the archefossil – meillasoux's rebuke of correlationism, which posits a necessary reciprocity between mind and nature, and that nature and mind cannot be cognised by themselves – it is proven that a nature can exist without the mind, albeit through extinction (heat death, etc). but this claim rests on a tautology.

next, being-in-the-world takes centre stage as badiou first shows that ontology is discursively constructed – thinking can change the world

Joseph Aleo@josephaleo

Sep 23, 2021