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Speculative Realism: An Introduction
On April 27, 2007, the first Speculative Realism (SR) workshop was held at Goldsmiths, University of London, featuring four young philosophers whose ideas were loosely allied. Over the ensuing decade, the ideas of SR spread from philosophy to the arts, architecture, and numerous disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. SR has been arguably the most influential new current in continental philosophy since the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari found their second wind in the 1990s. But what is SR? This book is the first general overview by one of its original members, focusing on the aesthetic, ethical, ontological, and political themes of greatest importance to the movement. Graham Harman provides a balanced but critical assessment of his original SR colleagues – Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Quentin Meillassoux – along with a clear summary of his own Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). A number of central philosophical questions tie the four chapters What exactly is "correlationism," the chief enemy of SR? What are the stakes of philosophical realism, and is such realism better served by mathematics and the natural sciences, or by a broader model of cognitive activity that includes aesthetics? This book covers both the historical and conceptual development of the movement, providing a first-rate introduction for students, aided by helpful end-of-chapter study questions chosen by Harman himself. SR, Harman shows, is a vital and fast-developing field in contemporary philosophy.
190 pages, Hardcover
Published October 8, 2018
15 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
Graham Harman
62 books214 followersGraham 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.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 12, 2018
This book is a breath of fresh air between the strange disagreements in idealism and realism. Particularly, Harman gives a bridge between Grant's perspective of Idealism and Realism that is appealing. Although Harman is not totally sold, he understands the appeal, and that it is possible to still realize the interpretation with some caveats.
But to the core of the book: this is an excellent overview of the diversity of views that orient themselves to a new perspective in philosophy. Although I am still very confused with "Structural Materialism", the rest of the book is very well organized, and presents pretty decent challenges to each of the flavors of SR that, if honest to the flavors' origins, are well constructed.
That said, I think I need to look more into Grant and Object Oriented Ontology for comparison.
But to the core of the book: this is an excellent overview of the diversity of views that orient themselves to a new perspective in philosophy. Although I am still very confused with "Structural Materialism", the rest of the book is very well organized, and presents pretty decent challenges to each of the flavors of SR that, if honest to the flavors' origins, are well constructed.
That said, I think I need to look more into Grant and Object Oriented Ontology for comparison.
October 18, 2022
Fuck Kant
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 19, 2025
I bought this book mainly out of curiosity about Graham Harman’s discussion of Iain Hamilton Grant, because in Grant’s work Deleuze and Schelling come together: two thinkers I find deeply fascinating.
Grant’s own book (Philosophies of Nature After Schelling) is extremely difficult to read, so I hoped Harman would offer more clarification as he indeed explains other philosophers very well.
Grant’s project is a revival of Naturphilosophy through a reading of Schelling and Deleuze.
Why does Grant do this?
Continental philosophy, through idealism, linguistics and phenomenology, has largely remained stuck in language, representation, and subjectivity. And Grant wants to return to a Philosophy of Nature, which he finds in Schelling.
==> He starts from NATURA NATURANS, the producing nature. Instead of reducing nature to basic building blocks (SOMATISM), we must understand nature as production/ a becoming.
“For Grant, nature is not a basis to which everything must be reduced, but a basis from which everything is produced.” (p. 56)
(Spinoza is noticeably absent here + in Grant’s own book Spinoza is mentioned only once, on p. 90.)
---
Harman shows how Grant reads Deleuze as a contemporary Schellingian: nature is a virtual, intensive field, pre-individual, full of differential forces and tensions, actualizing itself in concrete individuals.
The Idea is not a transcendent model (as in a traditional Platonic reading), but an immanent problem-field in nature itself , a generative principle that produces structure.
Grant is made an intriguing rereading of Plato’s Timaeus, with links to Neoplatonism:
- Grant does not read Plato as a philosopher of representation and eternal Forms,
- but as someone searching for a cosmological principle of production.
In the Timaeus, the world is not constructed as a copy of Forms: rather, Forms are (invisible) structures, a generative principle, an ordering/causal framework, immanent natural laws (i.e. virtual in Deleuzian terms). (I need to check it, a next book to read)
Things are their effects but in an immanent way. And these effects can be many (the actual/multiplicity in Deleuze’s sense).
We speak here in terms of a “‘one-world physics’ rather than the two-world metaphysics of perfect form and imperfect copies that one normally finds in the textbooks.” (p. 64)
Schelling is then used to explain the passage from One-to-Many through two forces:
1. Principle of all Motion / infinite productivity (comes first)
2. Retardation, which slows the first, contraction… (cf. p. 65)
“...everything phenomenal is only a product and cannot be identified with productivity itself” (p. 65)
It is a “... serial decomposition that is never finished...” (p. 65, quoting Grant p. 148)
---
The link with Deleuze
“production is what causes being to become” (p. 68, quoting Grant, p. 43)
“the infamous Platonic copy is not mechanical production ... it is the principle of production, generation or emergence.” (p. 68)
“... Grant speaks of the Platonic kind as ‘a phase space of the IDEA in unlimited not-being, that is the always becoming, where the Idea acts as a limit-attractor towards which being never ceases to become ...’” (p. 69, referring to Grant, p. 45 + DeLanda's interpretation of Deleuze)
---
Why this naturphilosophy?
Grant wants to free philosophy from its narrow focus on ethics, language, representation, and correlationalism.
He wants to return to a realism of nature itself: nature as that which produces thought, not something constructed by us.
This offers a strong alternative to both Kant and Aristotle's SOMATISM. ==> Harman doesn't agree (explanation on page 70-71)
---
What is missing? Spinoza
It is striking that Spinoza, who completely animates this entire project: natura naturans, immanence, expression, is absent.
In both Grant and Harman, Spinoza is treated very lightly, even though his spirit is everywhere: univocity, immanence, pre-individual power.
---
Reading experience
I bought this book because Grant’s 'Philosophies of Nature After Schelling' is extremely dense and difficult.
==> "Speculative Realism: An Introduction" by Harman offers very useful context and explanation. Still, it is not light reading: much information, many names, and many conceptual leaps on relatively few pages.
But if you are interested in Grant, Brassier, Meillassoux, and Harman (OOO), and in what unites/dis-unites them under the label Speculative Realism, then this book is definitely worth reading.
Grant’s own book (Philosophies of Nature After Schelling) is extremely difficult to read, so I hoped Harman would offer more clarification as he indeed explains other philosophers very well.
Grant’s project is a revival of Naturphilosophy through a reading of Schelling and Deleuze.
Why does Grant do this?
Continental philosophy, through idealism, linguistics and phenomenology, has largely remained stuck in language, representation, and subjectivity. And Grant wants to return to a Philosophy of Nature, which he finds in Schelling.
==> He starts from NATURA NATURANS, the producing nature. Instead of reducing nature to basic building blocks (SOMATISM), we must understand nature as production/ a becoming.
“For Grant, nature is not a basis to which everything must be reduced, but a basis from which everything is produced.” (p. 56)
(Spinoza is noticeably absent here + in Grant’s own book Spinoza is mentioned only once, on p. 90.)
---
Harman shows how Grant reads Deleuze as a contemporary Schellingian: nature is a virtual, intensive field, pre-individual, full of differential forces and tensions, actualizing itself in concrete individuals.
The Idea is not a transcendent model (as in a traditional Platonic reading), but an immanent problem-field in nature itself , a generative principle that produces structure.
Grant is made an intriguing rereading of Plato’s Timaeus, with links to Neoplatonism:
- Grant does not read Plato as a philosopher of representation and eternal Forms,
- but as someone searching for a cosmological principle of production.
In the Timaeus, the world is not constructed as a copy of Forms: rather, Forms are (invisible) structures, a generative principle, an ordering/causal framework, immanent natural laws (i.e. virtual in Deleuzian terms). (I need to check it, a next book to read)
Things are their effects but in an immanent way. And these effects can be many (the actual/multiplicity in Deleuze’s sense).
We speak here in terms of a “‘one-world physics’ rather than the two-world metaphysics of perfect form and imperfect copies that one normally finds in the textbooks.” (p. 64)
Schelling is then used to explain the passage from One-to-Many through two forces:
1. Principle of all Motion / infinite productivity (comes first)
2. Retardation, which slows the first, contraction… (cf. p. 65)
“...everything phenomenal is only a product and cannot be identified with productivity itself” (p. 65)
It is a “... serial decomposition that is never finished...” (p. 65, quoting Grant p. 148)
---
The link with Deleuze
“production is what causes being to become” (p. 68, quoting Grant, p. 43)
“the infamous Platonic copy is not mechanical production ... it is the principle of production, generation or emergence.” (p. 68)
“... Grant speaks of the Platonic kind as ‘a phase space of the IDEA in unlimited not-being, that is the always becoming, where the Idea acts as a limit-attractor towards which being never ceases to become ...’” (p. 69, referring to Grant, p. 45 + DeLanda's interpretation of Deleuze)
---
Why this naturphilosophy?
Grant wants to free philosophy from its narrow focus on ethics, language, representation, and correlationalism.
He wants to return to a realism of nature itself: nature as that which produces thought, not something constructed by us.
This offers a strong alternative to both Kant and Aristotle's SOMATISM. ==> Harman doesn't agree (explanation on page 70-71)
---
What is missing? Spinoza
It is striking that Spinoza, who completely animates this entire project: natura naturans, immanence, expression, is absent.
In both Grant and Harman, Spinoza is treated very lightly, even though his spirit is everywhere: univocity, immanence, pre-individual power.
---
Reading experience
I bought this book because Grant’s 'Philosophies of Nature After Schelling' is extremely dense and difficult.
==> "Speculative Realism: An Introduction" by Harman offers very useful context and explanation. Still, it is not light reading: much information, many names, and many conceptual leaps on relatively few pages.
But if you are interested in Grant, Brassier, Meillassoux, and Harman (OOO), and in what unites/dis-unites them under the label Speculative Realism, then this book is definitely worth reading.
January 4, 2019
Rather than a summary of all of the offshoots of this school of thought, Harman goes straight for an overview of the four original thinkers that got the whole thing started in the late oughts-including himself. He thankfully makes no pretense to be a voice of god style commentator and both gives you fair summaries of the other thinkers as well as his commentary, sometimes critical, on their thought.
I found this a very useful book in exploring both why I love this trend, especially as it is in the previously unsalvageable and formerly mostly hopeless and solipsistic school of Continental philosophy, as well as the disagreements I have with it and how I can align myself with or against its four major founders and to what extent. It does not go much into other thinkers in the speculative realist trend who one may find even more compelling, but perhaps that could be a future follow up book.
Personally I find myself most (if not entirely) with Brassier on the conclusions to come to but share much of my method for doing so with Harman rather than he-of course, I also think taking a step outside of western philosophy in general is a good thing to do to be able to come to the language to avoid correlationism itself, which has always struck me as a Christian, and in particular protestant, cultural vice.
I found this a very useful book in exploring both why I love this trend, especially as it is in the previously unsalvageable and formerly mostly hopeless and solipsistic school of Continental philosophy, as well as the disagreements I have with it and how I can align myself with or against its four major founders and to what extent. It does not go much into other thinkers in the speculative realist trend who one may find even more compelling, but perhaps that could be a future follow up book.
Personally I find myself most (if not entirely) with Brassier on the conclusions to come to but share much of my method for doing so with Harman rather than he-of course, I also think taking a step outside of western philosophy in general is a good thing to do to be able to come to the language to avoid correlationism itself, which has always struck me as a Christian, and in particular protestant, cultural vice.
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October 2, 2020Харман интересно закручивает драматургию книги: расправляясь с Брасье, он оппонирует Гранту, представляет себя любимого и хвалит Мейясу.
Собственно, для Хармана идея Мейясу о контингентном виртуальном (материалистическом) Абсолюте выглядит наиболее интересной из небольшого арсенала концептов спекулятивного реализма на данный момент, не считая собственных наработок Хармана в эстетике.
Собственно, для Хармана идея Мейясу о контингентном виртуальном (материалистическом) Абсолюте выглядит наиболее интересной из небольшого арсенала концептов спекулятивного реализма на данный момент, не считая собственных наработок Хармана в эстетике.
April 28, 2025
Os trabalhos do Harman como comentador são sempre admiráveis, mas, dessa vez, achei dificil de acompanhar a maior parte dos argumentos. Aprendi muito pouco sobre as reais posições de cada filosofo. O erro parece ter sido mais na minha falta de atenção do que no autor.
November 22, 2018
Harmans gennemgang af Goldsmith oplægget er hans hidtil bedste udlægning af hans Quadruple object. Hans gennemgang af de andre spekulative realister er mindre velskrevet men en god opsummering.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews