Książę sieci. Bruno Latour i metafizyka

by Graham Harman, Grzegorz Czemiel (Translator), Marcin Rychter (Translator)

Książka ta stanowi wyjątkowe połączenie teorii aktora-sieci Brunona Latoura ze spekulatywnym realizmem Grahama Harmana oraz jego sprzymierzeńców. Będzie fascynującą lekturą dla wszystkich zainteresowanych nowymi trendami w humanistyce, które pojawiają się po przydługim postmodernistycznym intermezzo.

Graham Harman (1968) jest profesorem filozofii w Southern California Institute of Architecture, wcześniej wykładał na American University w Kairze. Jego najnowsze książki to Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (2016) i Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political (2014). W roku 2013 ukazał się polski przekład jego Traktatu o przedmiotach.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Sociology, Nonfiction

392 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2009

About the author

Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is a professor at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is a contemporary philosopher of metaphysics, who attempts to reverse the linguistic turn of Western philosophy. He terms his ideas object-oriented ontology. A larger grouping of philosophers, Speculative Realism, includes Harman and the philosophers Iain Hamilton Grant, Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier.

Reviews

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the book reviews Latour's major works, quoting too much and sticking quite close to the text, while the second half focuses more on Harman's own philosophical commitments and where they coincide/conflict with Latour's. That's not what I was expecting; the straightforward, chronological summaries and then digression into object-oriented philosophy were a bit disappointing. Still, the book works well for a couple reasons. First, I'm just getting started reading Latour and rather than read his immense back catalog the quick, focused readings of his major works here is a huge boon. I'd recommend this book to anyone in a similar situation; read the first half at least rather than all of Latour's works, or perhaps use that half as a guide to which of Latour's books you should check out (for instance, I took away that Irreductions in The Pasteurization of France is the place to start for me).
Secondly, Harman is a rare gem in philosophy. He borrows Latour's penchant for long lists of heterogenous objects and his preference for cogent rhetoric over precise argumentation. His take-down of analytic philosophy around pp. 167-176 is great; it's not that the analytics aren't great at constructing arguments, it's that the precision of arguments isn't the only or most valuable aspect of a philosophy (he leans heavily on the opening of Whitehead's Process and Reality here). I still disagree with Harman's particular philosophy but he is a refreshing voice with some neat tricks up his sleeve (e.g. his reading Latour through hyperbole rather than critique).

[Lukáš · Rating 3 out of 5]

One can't say that the two personalities meeting here (Harman & Latour) would be anything, but interesting. As with the book itself, Harman does a solid job of reading through Bruno Latour's major works, teasing out the arguments and niches and seeking to order them - and succeeds. In particular, when confronting the Prince's ideas with other thinkers, one can't but enjoy the insightful ways how this is done. In particular, it seems hard to chuckle over the Socratic dialogue "Latour" in order to highlight the challenge of "properties beyond relationality".
As with the second part of the book, Harman departs from Latour on certain occasions, just to flow back and forth with regard to thinkers such as Husserl or Meillasoux. His proposal includes opening Latour's pathway in some ways (including, for example, a suggestion of a fourtold reading of objects' properties).
While I appreciate the take on Latour's metaphysics, I can't but escape that while Harman's fascination / drive toward establishing some kind of complex or speculative realism has its charms, the lack of direct engagement with Latour's ideas in the second part (and instead meditating on derivations coming from there) confuses me on one major aspect of Latour's work, which comes from Latour's political ideas. I feel that against the radical aim of liberating subjectivities through Latour's project of "cosmopolitics" which involve more political space for nonhumans, Harman seems perhaps a bit ignorant toward the questions of im/possibility of reaching alternate understandings of objects in philosophy. This is somewhat puzzling toward Harman's method of hyperbolizing thinkers - not aiming to sound Straussian, one ought, however ask - what happens when some of these ideas become cemented in everyday micropolitical life? What potential problems and caveats might this lead to in practice, given that Harman's proposals become accepted? What may be the backlash stemming from the will to know?
Although I can imagine some fruitful discussions with regard to these questions, it doesn't play down the fact that this book is in many ways a fine read.

[Karl Steel · Rating 5 out of 5]

No time to write an elaborate review. But YES this strikes me as a very good introduction to Latour, a great take down of Heidegger's ultra-humanism, and likely the best available introduction to object-oriented philosophy. I do think Harman's 'weird realism' is correct in reserving something to objects, and in making objects, as it were, strangers to themselves, in order to allow something to happen. Without that, how can any network form or shift?

My only annoyance with the book is its repetitiveness. Several points appear 5 times or so. I see the pedagogic utility, but in an e-book format, Harman could have just provided links back to previous paragraphs, which would have sped up my reading.

[John Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really two books. The first half of the book is a (lightly critical) summary of Latour's thought, focusing on four of Latour's central concepts: actors/actants, irreducibility, translation, and alliance. Harman notably places Latour's early short work "Irreductions" at the center of Latour's thought.

The second half of the book consists in a working out of an object-oriented philosophy, one which takes Latour (and Whitehead) to be pioneers of OOP, and which hybridizes Latour with Heidegger to produce a full-blown account of objects. This is a continuation of Harman's earlier texts, but here we find a fairly persuasive argument for objects as both relational and possessing reality beyond or beneath relations. Causation becomes vicarious, in that objects only affect or encounter one another via mediation. Harman also engages Melliassoux on correlationalism along the way.

Stylistically, this book is a breath of fresh air. Harman is not engaged in hagiography, like so many in the SPEP crowd seem to be. He's doing speculative metaphysics, and he writes with panache. (There's a whole sidebar about Karl Rove trying to destroy Immanuel Kant that is bizarre and wonderful.) People who work in process philosophy, philosophy of technology, or Continental philosophy would do well to read this book.

[KeyForLocked · Rating 2 out of 5]

1 / In pages 145-147, Latour struggles to address three types of cause and effect: indirect, defeated, and asymmetrical. Additionally, he faces a classic problem in relational theory—if a third term is required every time a relationship is established between two terms, then another third term would be needed for the new relationship, leading to an infinite regress. Latour’s predicament, ultimately, stems from his view that things lack an inner core.

2 / OOO is rightly criticized for being self-referential. How could Harman overlook the advancements in modern analytical metaphysics concerning objects? Harman notes that in Latour’s work, some programs are pragmatically valid but not metaphysically. But why should a pragmatic thinker, arbitrarily appropriated as part of a metaphysical school, concede the primacy of metaphysics?

3 / The first half effectively explains Latour’s main program. However, the second half, which delves into OOO’s private concerns, is so poorly handled that I skips the last chapter entirely. Harman tends to turn any philosopher unfamiliar to him into a straw man, and his interpretations often lack proper references. Such rough treatment is inexcusable in serious philosophical studies.

4 / Symmetry and relationalism, central to Latour’s program, are abandoned (though Latour himself seems inclined to discard the latter, not for metaphysical reasons, but for pragmatic ones). It’s unclear how this position remains relevant to Latour’s original ideas.

5 / The writing is vivid, but this clarity comes at the cost of condescension, treating the reader as if they were slow-witted. The author seems incapable of advancing the argument without endlessly circling the same points. Unfortunately, there’s no comparable philosophical study on Latour, which is regrettable given the poor quality of this one.

[Igor Capelari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um comentário excelente do pensamento do seu metre Latour. Harman é um sonho de seguidor nesse sentido. Além disso, é a exposição mais lúcida e profunda da OOO que eu ja li. Tem horas que o texto declina, o autor é relativamente caótico.

[Brent Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's first half provides a concise overview of Bruno Latour's object-oriented metaphysics. Latour is a French social thinker and co-developer of actor-network theory. I understood that part of the book, but then got lost in the second half where Graham Harman critiques and fine-tunes that metaphysic. Still, that first half was worth the price. I see Latour as an alternative to our traditional person-centered metaphysic, inherited first from the Greeks and then from the Enlightenment, the humanistic Kantian tradition that puts people at the center of things.

This is part of my ongoing inquiry into continental thinking, based largely on Heidegger and those following or responding to him. My field of educational technology neglects the body and how we engage the material world - we're too caught up in dualistic cognitive thinking and other dualistisms (splits like mind/body, fact/value, theory/practice).

So imagine a philosophy that doesn't privilege humans and out intentions and agency. We are entities among many - physical objects natural and artificial, ideas and constructions of various kinds. We each engage the world through pushes and pulls. There is no essence, no essential defining qualities, and hence no real continuity over time - except through allegiances or investments in networks. Those networked investments constitute the order of things, the continuity that grounds and orients us. What a radical idea, violating our privileged sense that we're special as humans!

I love this radical object-oriented scheme as a pluralistic flattening or leveling of things, as a basis for starting over in our thinking and building a fresh ontology that can withstand various challenges to God- or human-centered philosophies. The scheme has some fresh insights for technology (my professional interest), agency, time and change, networks and identity. No need to fully trash a more people-centered view (e.g., activity theory, practice theory, hermeneutics, pragmatism). All of these schemes have value and explain things at a different scale or focus.

I would love to introduce my field of ed tech to these ideas, but not sure how and where to gain entry!

[Miroslaw Aleksander · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book starts with a run down of Latour's pre-2000 ideas, primarily focusing on actor-network theory. The second part, despite the promising beginning, is increasingly problematic. Although this is supposed to add to Latour's ideas and elevate them to the position of metaphysics, Harman seems to slowly lose focus on the French sociologist. But this is not the only problem. Although this part reads well, it becomes repetitive. While the first two instances of using Heidegger's Geviert are interesting and add to the book, but by the third time it seems its just padding to make the book longer. The chapter about object-oriented-ontology is fairly loosely connected with the first two parts. Stylistically, his flourishes at times seem inane; he also suffers from that typically academic disease of "I have to coin a new name/concept for something that was already named and discussed to show how innovative I am!" Finally, the discussion of Kant at the end seems apologetic.

Now, that I've gotten that out of my system, the first two parts are worthwhile. Thee first is a nice and accurate introduction to Latour, the second a much-needed discussion of the most significant flaws in this aspect of his work.

[Kars · Rating 4 out of 5]

If it wasn't for the final chapter - which I found significantly less readable than the rest of this book - I would have given this five stars. Harman offers a great introduction to Bruno Latour's key works, reading them from a philosophical perspective. The key point of this book is that philosophy should not reduce reality to human experience of the world. In stead, it should adopt an "object-oriented" stance, in which all of reality is composed of actors that relate, but only indirectly. It is a refreshing perspective because it encourages an almost naive curiosity in the world and its mysterious workings. Finally, it very much appealed to me as a designer interested in creating things that relate to society in various ways. In fact, that I have not often felt compelled to pick up a book of philosophy, but was very much drawn to this one, should be endorsement enough. Because as opposed to many of his colleagues, Harman is both a clear and entertaining writer.

[Attentive · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, divided into two parts, could've been great if it had simply deepened then summarised its main points instead of tailing off into another exposition of Harman's "quadruple object" elaboration of Heidegger's tool-analysis.

But the discussion of the philosophical elements of Bruno Latour's contribution to science and the scientific method is clear and fascinating, and Harman's affection for Latour's vigour and irrepressible realist tendencies makes it additionally engaging.

As someone who has only read surveys or fragments of Latour previously, this seemed to be a good introduction to him.

[Terence Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a useful account of the early Latour, and then goes on to expound a philosophy that is the exact opposite. Where Latour does a good job of uniting realism and historicity in his description of the knowledge process Harman elaborates a synchronic dualist ontology.

[Sam]

A monster.

[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

Latour's works analyzed by Graham Harman.