Object-Oriented Philosophy: The Noumenon's New Clothes

by Peter Wolfendale, Ray Brassier (Afterword)

A remarkably clear explication of the tenets of Object-Oriented Philosophy and an acute critique of the movement's ramifications for philosophy today.

How does the patience and rigour of philosophical explanation fare when confronted with an irrepressible desire to commune with the object and to escape the subjective perplexities of reference, meaning, and sense?

Moving beyond the hype and the inflated claims made for “Object-Oriented” thought, Peter Wolfendale considers its emergence in the light of the intertwined legacies of twentieth-century analytic and Continental traditions.

Both a remarkably clear explication of the tenets of OOP and an acute critique of the movement's ramifications for philosophy today, Object-Oriented Philosophy is a major engagement with one of the most prevalent trends in recent philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Metaphysics

464 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2014

Reviews

[Alyosha · Rating 4 out of 5]

OOO invokes such an initial response ("ooh..."), relying upon its evocative and momentary allure. And yet, beneath the facade of this draw there is the reality of this theoretical "object" - a nothing, a void, a hollowness which is more vapid than profound, relying on the flash and allure of language and rhetorical flair to cover over a lack of formal discipline and thoughtful explication. Said otherwise - sophistry. Props to Pete for pointing out the nudity of the emperor of objects, for unmasking his dissimulated inanity.

Much like his beloved objects, then, Harman's thought is all about allure and sensational appearance, which masks an ungraspable void which could equally be called really real or absolutely empty (a vacuous and pernicious nothingness). As Brassier adeptly points out in his addendum to Pete's book (pg. 420), Harman's theory is founded upon a pseudo-phenomenological methodology (which, as Pete notes in multiple instances, is never thematically expressed or questioned, for it remains methodologically faithful neither to Phenomenology nor to any critical enterprise) which, in denying the reality of phenomenal access to objects qua real, ends up giving up the real import of Husserl's philosophical strategy. If phenomenology cannot access the real qua phenomenality, then what is the value of a theory rooted in phenomenological methodology? Again, it remains but an act, a dumb-show - a vacuous and vapid mimesis; sophistry.

Read this book if you desire an unquestionable disclosure and explication of the irremediable faults in Harman's "philosophy." If not, please, only one thing - do not take Harman, or Object Oriented Anything, seriously unless they/it are/is willing to (actually) engage in a critical dialogue concerning the "objects" in question. Not sure if the day of OOP/O has set yet or not, for I heard word from a colleague in a music department of students interested in OOO and music. The phantom of the noumenal refuses to be exercised; then let us run it through some rigorous, philosophical exercises, and so to exhaust its rhetorical embellishments, exposing its nudity, its fleshless skeleton always already decomposing. This speculative autopsy reveals that its subject was never living to begin with - but a rhetorical or aesthetic corpse, miming the words and the thought of philosophy.

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A devastating analysis of Harman that extends to contemporary trends of thought which grant equal agential footing to non-human actants. The conclusive refutation of "allusive ontology" and its resultant ontological liberalism is the highlight of the book. Wolfendale spares no punches, but this is medicine that any thinker even remotely interested in these ideas can't afford to deny. Wolfendale is right: aesthetics is not first philosophy, as Harman suggests. It is almost certainly the heart of last philosophy.

[Chant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Triple O, the hot new thing in the realm of anglo-continental philosophy! What could go wrong? Misreadings of Heidegger? Check. Style over substance? Check. Writing multiple books that revolve around the same idea (if there is one)? Check. Graham Harman is your guy if you're into that type of 'philosophy'. I on the other hand have heard about Object-Oriented-Ontology's existence for years now but never felt the need to delve into his work and I am glad I didn't.

Wolfendale has made a fantastically well-written book that also has explicit argumentation that not only explains OOO/OOP more clearly than Harman himself but blows down the rickitity philosophical-musings that Graham (apparently) professes in his many books. Recommended reading for anyone that has plans to read any of Graham Harman's books.

PS. I think those quote from the book encapsulates Harman's project.
"Harman may see himself as Lovecraft, Picasso, or even Coltrane- a bold innovator reshaping the cultural terrain-but he is really Michael Bay: a conservative authority continually churning
out ever more explosive (and unfortunately popular) cultural products, which serve only to exemplify the vices of his artform rather than its virtues"

[Alexander O. Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

On method: In which the estranged children of Heidegger have their Methodenstreit

The kids are fighting. Within the toddling philosophical kindergarten of Speculative Realism (SR), its first task was the return to philosophical examination of primary qualities/essences/substances (things-in-themselves) as opposed to their secondary qualities (things-for-us, e.g. sense data). According to the Speculative Realist story, the gauntlet was initially thrown by Quentin Meillassoux in After Finitude which developed a novel argument for rejecting thought's necessary relation to existence, stirring the pot of many contemporary thinkers in continental philosophy and continental inspired theory applications by questioning their Kantian foundations as ill-defined. As Slavoj Žižek said of the work, "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." That is to say, Meillassoux individuated a fresh philosophical project out of the old projects that inspired it. Although, Žižek seems to like watching the kids fight; he shows up in a variety of places to play the role of the classroom's ring announcer. This is also true for Wolfendale's book, where Žižek claims the text "dispel(s) the mist" and that "What Voltaire said about god should be repeated about this book: if it didn't exist, we would have to invent it." However, Harman claims that while "disappointed" with his friend's review, in private correspondence he claims to have been persuaded that it meant nothing without further exposition.

As the SR story continues, after Meillassoux, the problematic he developed was supposedly championed by Graham Harman in his development of Object-Oriented Philosophy (OOP). Although, this story is suspect due to the fact that Harman thoroughly branded himself as this moreso than following Meillassoux directly in his fully individuated form of thinking. Instead, Harman claimed to have flipped the script on the Germanic tradition of Phenomenology's origins in Husserl and Heidegger through a heterodox interpretation that rejects representationalism of senses in favor of arguing that the senses themselves are objects. Albeit, it would seem that if one wanted to approach things-in-themselves, fully dissecting the history of Phenomenology from its origin point would seem like the principle target of generating such a philosophy. Wouldn't it be some sort of philosophical miracle if, from the very start, all we needed was a redressing of Phenomenology in order to generate a new methodological playground inspired by Meillassoux's well-organized problem statement led us to the things-in-themselves after all this time?

Enter Peter Wolfendale...

Peter Wolfendale certainly has the chops to respond to Harman, completing a doctorate thesis that re-examines the Heideggerian question of Being by reframing the question. Additionally, he had already spent a great deal of time in discussions among the Speculative Realist blogging community including many of its original philosophers. Wolfendale is every bit of the odd Heideggerian as Harman; thus, it would seem that he is well positioned to find it within him to perform a sympathetic reading of his OOP. Despite his best efforts to do so, he proposes to have found serious inconsistencies that rot OOP's proverbial Oak tree before it takes root. Within the first 130 pages of his 400+ page book, Wolfendale alleges that despite both he and Harman being rogue Heideggerian philosophers, Harman is more stylistically so. Repeatedly Wolfendale points out that at the seed of Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is the germination of unaddressed metaphysical commitments hidden within an alleged "slapdash" of Heideggerian claims that hide subconscious ontological commitments that undercut his entire project. Wolfendale shows this most concretely by showing his missteps in Heideggerian interpretation, but he also provides a lucid historical analysis of the history of ontology spanning both the analytic and phenomenological traditions of philosophy that take their inspirations from Kant. While the historical analysis is more of an original synthesis that perhaps we should not necessarily require Harman to respond to, it is a good one, and worthy of notice for OOP.

While the book targets Harman specifically - in fact, at times it comes dangerously close to ad hominem - it develops some specific methodological limitations of the more general area OOP as leading us back to the starting point of the problem: hence Wolfendale's titular reference to leaving the OOP's classroom's king naked. As such, fundamentally it seems Wolfendale's main critiques are directed towards OOP's proposed Ontological Method in contrast with the Phenomenological Method. It seems the main point is of contention is that Harman's reading of Heidegger does not escape phenomenology nor Kant's fideism at all. It just buries the seeds of the Oak Tree in the school's latent epistemological playground. This is something that Harman alludes to directly in his own response:

"What [Wolfendale] really seems to worry about in my supposed 'sidelining of methodological issues' is the weakened status of epistemology in OOO. All his various putdowns about methodology rest on his claim that epistemology must be the starting point for any real philosophy."

Despite Harman offering a partial response to this concern, it does mark a distinct rift in philosophical directions in which Wolfendale is not especially mistaken in his reading, nor is his entire point merely a lament to OOP's lack of epistemology as Harman seems to think. I tend to agree that Wolfendale is correct about Harman's issue of method and his pseudo-egalitarian/liberal ontology, and to some extent, I do favor Wolfendale's readings of Heidegger to Harman's. Although, I can see how Harman is genuinely, in good faith - rather than the bad faith trickster role that Wolfendale casts him - struggling to develop a new philosophy from older philosophical roots. There are times when Wolfendale accuses Harman of bad philosophy and dangerous misreadings of philosophers where he could have been less accusatory and condescending.

Lesser Directly Addressed Alternatives

While Wolfendale is overtly addressing Harman's vision of the OOP Oak Tree, it looms just below the playground turf that he perhaps believes Harman's project is the foundation upon which all of the variants of OOP develops. While perhaps this is not what he genuinely believes, it seems important to address how Harman's commitments are not especially what is germinating for all OOP developments. I think Harman is correct in saying that Wolfendale maintains a commitment to epistemology in his version of Transcendental Realism that Harman doesn't hold himself to. And perhaps this points to something about how he might find all OOP to be discredited in one fell swoop by taking down Harman's entire philosophical corpus. However, this particular critique of OOP is particularly specific to Harman's system of Heideggerian commitments.

Not all OOP germinates speculatively through Heidegger, even though it would be easy to see why someone might assume so. As implied previously, it seems easy to think (as perhaps Harman or Wolfendale do) that if one wishes to redress things-in-themselves, one must redress Heidegger. Firstly, there are many other Phenomenological traditions of which one could begin within each of which would require a different derivative of this critique. As Tom Sparrow points out in The End of Phenomenology, phenomenology did not fail as a project because its practitioners failed to generate philosophy worth keeping; it failed because its supposed "method" never really became functional in the way Husserl expected. Instead, Sparrow points out that every Phenomenologist seems to constantly be trying to find a new method out of the old, and the project of Phenomenology became finding "The Method" more so than studying things-in-themselves as they intended. In this way, of course Harman's project fails along similar lines, just as Wolfendale notes. But again, this does not mean Harman's OOP fails to help germinate a legitimate philosophy. It merely fails to develop "The Method," for climbing the branches of the Ontological tree.

However, even outside of the tradition of Phenomenology are those approaching the phenomenological hypothesis in ways that are more alien to those we refer to as "phenomenologists." Many of these traditions, Wolfendale mentions as ways to approach SR more clearly (since he seems to believe that Levi Bryant's onticology is beginning to admit the limitations of OOP's failed ontological egalitarianism), but he doesn't quite delineate how. The playground includes an entire class of toddlers interested in climbing the tree. All of these places are poised to be the starting initial branch for climbing the tree. While mentioned briefly, Levi Bryant's form is almost entirely Deleuzian, inspiring almost entirely unique epistemological, ontological, and phenomenological inspirations of his own. Likewise, Steven Shaviro's development of a Whiteheadian speculative ground for phenomenology also provides a ground for a different OOP, that Levi Bryant somewhat amends within his own method. (In fact, most of our classmates are helping each other climb the oak tree in one way or another.) For the discerning, both of these methods have common roots in their relation to philosophy of technology and cybernetics, of which Bryant is well aware but so are Cecile Malaspina, Mark Hansen, and Yuk Hui in their own ways. None of these specifically owe Heidegger a response to do productive speculative philosophy. Additionally Wolfendale speaks highly of Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter as a different approach that handles some issues particularly well despite her foyer into SR being merely a quick stop. However, it seems that above all, Wolfendale appreciates Deleuzian SR readings, which would mean that a next step for him might be approaching how that might be done more closely. (I'm presently waiting for his second book, so maybe he does? I'm especially excited to see what he claims about memes, as he proclaims in the blurb! That's where I'm planning on going in my own work, so Wolfendale may very well be an excellent philosophical dicursive partner for me.)

The fact that we could entirely ignore Harman's interpretations of Heidegger, read his method through, say, a Deleuzian commitment as Bryant has, and see the parallels without making topologically equivalent metaphysical commitments I would argue is a strength rather than a weakness of SR, and I think Wolfendale agrees; he just wishes they were more careful in their appropriation of philosophical meanings of things. It points to a convergence in method that perhaps requires a different starting point than any of the starting assumptions about the germinating philosophy of our Oak Tree. While heavily philosophically critiqued by folks, especially Brassier, for not being a legitimate philosophical "movement," these critiques are often under the guise that a proper philosophical movement requires that they belong to some kind of paradigm of agreement on initial concepts, or organization of metaphysical problematic(s) that point to a solid starting point to develop from. That is, it seems to presume that a movement of ideas would begin by saying "The issue of corellationism begins with Heidegger's commitments to X that must be redressed into X', but in order to do that, we must see how that affects Heidegger's lemmas of the set [a,b,c,...]." And then would proceed to solve them out by ironing out the details. But is this not the kind of philosophizing that the speculative realists claim led to their problem in the first place? That is, the systematic derivation of a system of philosophy becomes naval gazing within an organization of pre-existing claims; you know, like phenomenology's introspection. Instead, the SR kids seem to be happy considering how to climb the tree that they firmly accept is going to grow and are less interested in those saying their teachers aren't happy with their understanding of the tree. After all, our seed is planted in the playground, not the classroom.

Instead, the speculative realists sought to find little germinating seeds in philosophy where they each came their kindergarten class' show-and-tell to explain why their favorite philosopher helps them understand Reality, and miraculously, they all kind of realized that Reality appears to them more like different branches of the core tree than prior philosophical methods seemed to allow. So, contrary to what most seem to think, SR, when done well seems to understand that the best philosophy being done actually does look into science, applied mathematics, technological lenses, and so on. Almost all the philosophers they pull from have empirical science and logically inspired foundations that they sought to find the cracks that peer into the things-in-themselves beyond things-for-us. Whitehead was a logician/mathematician who reformulated Einstein's work via some inspirations from Henri Bergson, who also was highly literate in the sciences (contrary to his critics). Deleuze used many scientific developments in order to develop a metaphysics that he thought would reintegrate science with philosophy. Husserl was a trained scientist who turned to phenomenology at a time that set the stage for the separation of the analytic method of Frege from the so-called continental approach that initially centered around Phenomenology.

On that note, we can turn back to a highly productive aspect of Wolfendale's approach: he reintegrates a valuable way that analytic thinking can substantially take rampant continental stylistics to task without fundamentally throwing out what makes continental approaches valuable. Despite this whole section being about how Wolfendale's approach is highly particular to Harman's commitments and not OOP or SR as a whole, if read in good faith, Wolfendale provides some clear places in which the "movement" can avoid getting in its own way. It has occasionally been mentioned that SR aims to be a "post-continental" philosophy; and Wolfendale has provided an opportunity for it to show it can be by reintegrating the Analytic philosophical approach to reframe or rephrase the latent commitments that perhaps were unintended or were, but were unnecessary. In otherwords, Wolfendale's work helps understand which branches we shouldn't venture too far out in our climb.

This does not mean that post-continental thinking should address every bit of analysis that undercuts its logical structure, lest it wants to be held to the standards of positivistic epistemology, but the Analytic style does enable an approach to seeing more inherent biases that exist between the branches that might tell us where our tree might break, leading our teachers to end recess prematurely and set rules about the Oak Tree for us. For this alone, the book is worth the read. This is not in-spite of, but rather *because of* the way it has challenged the continentally-trained sensibilities of OOP. Again, Wolfendale is exceptionally well placed to be continentally charitable while still offering a cutting analysis even if he appears to us as the classroom know-it-all, goody two-shoes.

Addendum on Harman's Response

It should be noted that Harman frequently makes himself an easy target, and he often responds in ways that don't seem to help his philosophical case. He puts his name on almost everything related to SR, regularly name-drops connections with celebrity philosophers, and writes long-winded emotional responses about critics that typically could be boiled down to a couple pages that only partially address his critics' thoughts. To be fair, sometimes he could reasonably say that he is being attacked personally; and in the case of Ray Brassier's postscript, overtly so. Although, I think Brassier is right that Harman should welcome this book as showing that Harman's project actually warranted such a careful response, but of course that's not how Harman interpreted it. But also, he is not far off in saying that this entire book was driven by "revenge." Wolfendale makes pretty clear that he thought he was being given a challenge by Harman and Levi Bryant to write this book, and he took that challenge seriously. But to make matters more volatile, Harman essentially claims that it's Wolfendale who mistook what in-fact did look like a challenge for an insult. He could at least acknowledge that he did come across as challenging Wolfendale, regardless of whether that was to egg him on or with genuine interest to seeing his coherently organized argument. In my reading, Wolfendale has the character of a dogmatically stubborn philosopher who really is trying to tease out an issue that has warrant, and I think he did so. Harman does seem to have a chip on his shoulder with his critics that at times seems to get in the way of the content of project, and that could be interpreted as his inability to respond with rigor to those who are asking him to reflect on his own philosophy in light of their readings. Harman's proverbial "new clothes" definitely rendered him shirtless, but not naked. But if he thinks that's embarrassing, he can change. If he doesn't, then perhaps he should learn to play without a shirt instead of pretending he's wearing one.

The discourse around OOP on the whole has been a productive exercise that Harman genuinely has done much to facilitate. I wished that he could temper making his philosophical commitments so entwined with his personality. When making it so clear that this is how he feels, he sets himself up to feel like every point made is an ad hominem. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in OOP. It points to some legitimate pitfalls about how stylistic interpretations, when made too laxly, could be interpreted as undercutting the entire project. In fact, it's fair to say that this seems to be endemic of how much of the Speculative Realist conversation has occurred over the blog-o-sphere - a space that depends more upon an economy of clicks moreso than content - and in some respects, that's appears to be part of the reason Brassier continues to be so cynical about SR and OOP as being legitimate philosophical exercises. Truly, OOP's playground developed in a click-oriented popularity contest outside the classroom. Nevertheless, I think this new flavor of realism will find a way to grow.

[AG · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than a systematic dismantling of Graham Harman’s rickety framework of “ontology,” Object-Oriented Philosophy acts as a succinct guide to the history of the very concept — traversing both continental and analytic fields, Wolfendale’s draws a line between thinkers as seemingly disparate as Heidegger and Quine with laudatory precision.

The virtue of this approach is in its ability to clarify the problems that OOP claims to tackle, in a manner that reveals the sophistry at work and shows its historical role as a faithless interceptor of honest discourse. In lieu of going into the details of Wolfendale’s (incredibly thorough) critique, it suffices to say that Harman misinterprets and misappropriates Heidegger’s notion of “thrownness,” using rhetorical slight of hand to shift the conceptual goalposts from a phenomenological to an ontological register without developing any methodology to support this shift. The result of Harman’s “ontology” is thus a vulgarization of Heidegger’s pre-theoretical phenomenology in which the haecceity of pure encounter precludes any relationship to truth and reduces reality to a series of de-potentialized and inaccessible objects. By the end of the analysis, Wolfendale has managed to deflate any sense of metaphysical systematicity that might have still clung to OOP as a field and managed to reveal its character as a insidious rhetorical style apropos of the textually-oriented “correlationism” it purports to counter.

As a polemic, Object-Oriented Philosophy succeeds on every front, and more so: the analytical rigor and rhetorical candor of Wolfendale’s arguments simultaneously manage to outline the basics of his own method of transcendental realism. What’s most remarkable about Wolfendale’s method is the ease at which he feels in either analytic or continental camps; this is a true post-divide work. The book closes with Ray Brassier’s pithy send-off of “Speculative Realism,” pointing the way towards those emergent philosophical realisms and new rationalisms that show promise where OOP has failed. We can only hope that Harman’s glitzy objects stay submerged in the mysterious depths.

[blank · Rating 4 out of 5]

A level of engagement with philosophy that is worth aspiring to, I think that this book could give a good reference to anyone trying to understand the popular contemporary trends of continental philosophy. I found it to be a bit long-winded at times, however I appreciate the urgency the work represents.

After stumbling into the "speculative realist" theses a few years back, my interest in metaphysics was sparked. Fortunately, that was all; I didn't start any major projects or open a new museum, investing in the object of Harman-Industries. I had a stiff anti-metaphysical and skeptical bend at the time, following a rough experience with the actual science discipline. So, the naive "anti-Kantianism" of this 'tradition', the egalitarian ontology, the metaphysics to kill them all [loosely veiled in the all too moralistic and flamboyant language the authors employ] did have substantial allure. I was a naive mind, pulling at any loose threads I could spot.

Fortunately, I was directed towards Lee Braver's A Thing of this World, A history of continental anti-realism, which successfully works through majors canonical figures in the tradition which this speculative realist movement is intended to supervene--with the explicit intention of doing much of what Wolfendale does here, without the tiring direct engagement, the exegetical miracles their work requires. Further, Tom Sparrow's The End of Phenomenology situates the 'speculative realists' in relation to some common thread of anti-correlationism which assists in seeing the broader picture again before losing sense in its garb, however that work doesn't succeed in allowing the dust to settle.

Wolfendale's work here assists the unwary critic to come to terms with the failed speculative realist project, leading a path towards (or back to) more fertile ground.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely thorough, sustained critique of Harman's pseudo-(pop-)philosophizing, bringing into sharp relief his misreadings of Heidegger, Husserl, Kripke, Ortega y Gasset, DeLanda, Ladyman and Ross (with readings of Meinong, Frege, Russell, Quine, Carnap, Sellars, Badiou). (Helpful - the ciphering of Derrida, Badiou, and Meillassoux as counters of presence, unity, and ground, respectively.) Harman's main problem, seemingly, is the way in which he jumps, without justification, from epistemology to metaphysics (his ontologization of phenomenology). Essentially, it seems as though Harman has taken the Levinasian trope of the inexhaustibility of the knowability of the Other, de-anthropocized it, then converted it into some inhering property of all objects, some "supplementariness." Wolfendale also helpfully distinguishes this from the SR crowd (Latour, for example, privileges relationality, which Harman rejects in favor of a more robust objecthood). What I find perhaps most interesting about this work, though, is the way that it manages to traverse both the Continental and analytic traditions with supposed ease.

[宗儒 李 · Rating 4 out of 5]

看兩三個月總算是看完了，真的好長⋯