Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, Continuum, 2008.
"It is no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy, understood here as the history of what it is to know ... This remarkable “critique of critique” is introduced here without embellishment, cutting straight to the heart of the matter in a particularly clear and logical manner. It allows the destiny of thought to be the absolute once more." - From the preface by Alain Badiou
“This work is one of the most important to appear in continental philosophy in recent years and deserves a wide readership at the earliest possible date ... Après la finitude is an important book of philosophy by an authnted emerging voices in continental thought. Quentin Meillassoux deserves our close attention in the years to come and his book deserves rapid translation and widespread discussion in the English-speaking world. There is nothing like it.” — Graham Harman
"Meillassoux introduces a startlingly novel 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."
"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. Quentin Meillassoux does exactly this." - Slavoj Žižek
"Quentin Meillassoux has been described as the most rapidly prominent French philosopher in the Anglophone world since Jacques Derrida in the 1960's."
"In his clearly argued essay, now available in an excellent English translation, the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux shows that subjectivity and objectivity must be conceived of independently of each other ... It is a truly philosophical work in that it develops the original idea of a speculative materialism with uncompromising passion and great consistency." - Alexander Garcia Düttmann
"You may entirely disagree with the author's solution (I do) but not with the courage with which he proposes to escape from the prison of discourse and to put the much abused metaphor of the Copernican Revolution right at last." - Bruno Latour
"An exceptionally clear and careful writer... Quentin Meillassoux launches a stinging attack upon the state of philosophy in general, and takes initial steps towards a form of speculative philosophy which, he thinks, overcomes the shortcomings he has identified.' - John Appleby
"It's easy to see why Meillassoux's After Finitude has so quickly acquired something of a cult status among some readers who share his lack of reverance for 'the way things are'. The book is exceptionally clear and concise, entirely devoted to a single chain of reasoning. It combines a confident insitence on the self-sufficiency of rational demonstration with an equally rationalist suspicion of mere experience and consensus....[this] is a beautifully written and seductively argued book." - Peter Hallward
“After Finitude will certainly play a central role in ongoing debates on the status of philosophy, on questions pertaining to epistemology and, above all, to ontology. It will not only be an unavoidable point of reference for those working on the question of finitude, but also for those whose work deals with political theology, and the status of the religious turn of philosophy. After Finitude will certainly become an ideal corrosive against too rigid assumptions and will shake entrenched positions.” – Gabriel Riera
“There is something absolutely exhilarating about Meillassoux’s argument, and it is not difficult to see why his book has already aroused so much interest. The exposition and critique of correlationism is brilliant and Meillassoux is at his best when showing the philosophical complacency of contemporary Kantians and phenomenologists. The proposal of speculative realism is audacious and bracing, particularly when he defends the idea of nature as a ‘glacial universe’, cold and indeifferent to humans. Such is Pascal’s ‘Eternal silence of infinite spaces’, but without the consolation of a wager of God’s existence. However, by Mellassoux’s own admission, his proposal is incomplete and we await its elaboration in future books. Although, his style of presentation can turn into a sort of fine-grained logic-chopping worthy of Duns Scotus, the rigour, clarity and passion of the argument can be breathtaking.” – Simon Critchley
"Meillassoux addresses the question whether natural laws are necessary, and if so why, raised by Kant and gnawed by subsequent philosophers from Hume to Foucault. He offers a logical proof that the only feature of the laws of nature that is absolutely necessary is that they are contingent. He explores the ethical and metaphysical implications. Brassier translates Apres la finitude, which was published in 2006 by Editions du Seuil." - Eithne O'Leyne
"the fundamental affirmation of SR is an ambitious point of view, a new possibility for philosophy. A new vision. Philosophy can continue. In this sense I am happy that it is not merely a continuation of classical metaphysics nor an end of it. In this sense I am in agreement with the word realism. We are beyond the end of metaphysics and classical metaphysics with the term realism. The question of realism as opposed to materialism is not a crucial question today. What is important is that it is not correlationist or idealist. It is a new space for philosophy, one with many internal differences but this is a positive symptom." - Alain Badiou
"If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power - something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, yet also of never doing anything, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm." - Quentin Meillassoux
"Empirical science is today capable of producing statements about events anterior to the advent of life as well as consciousness." - Quentin Meillassoux
"...we know by the principle of unreason why non-contradiction is an absolute ontological truth: because it is necessary that what is be determined in such a way as to be capable of becoming, and of being subsequently determined in some other way. ...Accordingly, it becomes apparent that the ontological meaning of the principle of noncontradiction, far from designating any sort of fixed essence, is that of the necessity of contingency, or in other words, of the omnipotence of chaos." - Quentin Meillassoux
"...the fact of the stability of the laws of nature seems sufficient to refute the very idea of their possible contingency... But it is precisely this claim about the real contingency of physical laws that we propose to defend in all seriousness." - Quentin Meillassoux
"Today I’m working on the chapter of the Meillassoux book on After Finitude. Rather than “summarize” a book that is already written with sufficient clarity as it is, I’m going to try to isolate the key pillars in the argumentation of the book. (And I’ll categorize this as a “Composition of Philosophy” post, though I don’t intend to live-blog the writing of another book this summer. Maybe I’ll do it again in the future, but I don’t feel like it this time.)
If you’re writing a book honestly, you’ll always change your mind about a few things while writing it. But at the moment, I would say that the following are the 6 pillars of After Finitude. Incidentally, I am only convinced by point #1. I think the other five are all incorrect, though still very interesting.
1. Correlationism is the enemy. Instead of coming right out and calling themselves idealists, most post-Kantian philosophers choose the watery middle ground of correlationism. “Hey, the subject is always already outside of itself, immersed in a world.” That sort of thing. I call it “idealism with a realist alibi.”
2. There exists a position called strong correlationism that does not slide into absolute idealism. This is key for Meillassoux, because strong correlationism is not just his enemy, but his starting point. Meillassoux’s philosophical project is nothing other than to find the resources, within strong correlationism, for an overcoming of correlationism itself.
3. When strong correlationism is radicalized, what we end up with is the necessity of nothing else besides contingency. This step is the key to Meillassoux’s entire philosophy. If you’re not convinced by this step, you won’t be persuaded by the rest. (However, Meillassoux remains interesting even to the unpersuaded, which in my opinion is one of the surest marks of a genuine philosopher. If no one likes your work except those who agree with you, then you are simply a useful tool for achieving their aims. You are nothing but a surface. Being respected by those who reject your conclusions is the greatest honor there is.)
4. Temporal distance is more important than spatial distance. What I have in mind are two different passages, but especially the one he added to the English version of After Finitude. This is the passage where he rejects as superficial and trivial the claim that ancestrality (that which existed before any humans did) is of the same order as objects so spatially distant that no one can currently observe them. Meillassoux is quite firm on this point, and it has consequences that I will explore in the book. Basically, his rejection of the principle of sufficient reason is too focused on diachronic reasons: e.g., there is no reason why the law of gravity can’t change at random in the next moment. The theme Meillassoux ignores entirely is that of sufficient reason within any given moment: e.g., gold is the way it is because it has a certain molecular structure and the atoms in those molecules have certain properties, the quarks and electrons in those atoms have certain properties, and perhaps so on and so forth. In short, Meillassoux is interested in the contingent relations between events across time, and has no discernible interest in the emergence of wholes from parts in any given moment. If you were asked to write an essay called “Meillassoux’s mereology,” it would be tough to write, because the composition of entities (as opposed to the history of entities across time) is not really on his radar.
5. The contingency of natural laws does not contradict their apparent stability. This is Meillassoux’s own Cantorian moment… Since we can’t totalize the possible number of universes, we can’t be stunned by the miraculous odds that the universe as it is would support intelligent life, because no calculation of probability is relevant here. This is one of Meillassoux’s most shocking arguments, and one that I didn’t find at all convincing at first. But as the years go by I’m warming to it somewhat, and will explain why in the book.
6. Primary qualities are those that can be mathematized. For Meillassoux, the mathematical is the in-itself (he escapes the ambiguity of Ladyman and Ross on this point by denying the Pythagorean option outright: mathematical laws have an indexical relation to the real and are certainly not the real itself, though I don’t think this helps us much more than Ladyman and Ross– it’s simply a bit more frank). Readers of my writings will know that I disagree that the mathematical can be the in-itself.
On the whole, recent rereadings of After Finitude have led me to be more impressed by the book than ever. There is such a fresh feeling to everything Meillassoux does. His wagon wheels never fall into the ruts on the roads. Every couple of pages it seems like he’s reversing some familiar hand-me-down cliché from our view of the history of philosophy. When you read his books and articles, you feel the need to work a lot harder to be able to think with the same degree of rigor that he himself is employing." - Graham Harman
Read the book
Interview: Q. Meillassoux/F. Hecker/R. Mackay
Interview @ Influeneces
"Notes from ‘After Finitude’ by Quentin Meillassoux" By avoidingthevoid
Review by Gabriel Riera
Nathan Brown: “On After Finitude: A Response to Peter Hallward”
Simon Critchley: “Back to the Great Outdoors (Review of After Finitude)”
Graham Harman: "QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX: A NEW FRENCH PHILOSOPHER"
Dark Chemistry: "Quentin Meillassoux: Benefit and Alterity - Revisioning Metaphysics; or a Dark Materialism?"
Dark Chemistry: "Quentin Meillassoux: On Re-reading After Finitude"
Amod Lele: "Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese?"
Quentin Meillassoux: "Spectral Dilemma"
Quentin Meillassoux, "History and Event in the writings of Alain Badiou"
Quentin Meillassoux: “Time without Becoming”
