Graham Harman on Metaphysics, Art, & Speculative Realism

source: Philosophical Overdose    2013年4月22日
In this talk, Graham Harman discusses two types of philosophical paradox pertaining to human knowledge, and the relation that art has to both. The first is one discussed by Meno and Socrates, resulting in the Socratic claim that we both have and do not have the truth. Our inability to gain direct access to reality is what justifies philosophy as philosophia (the love of wisdom rather than wisdom itself) and rules out both mathematism and scientism as defensible models of philosophy. The second paradox is the familiar dispute over whether truth is discovered or constructed. Given that no direct access to reality is possible, the observation of truth itself seems to be part of the truth, yet the observer also cannot create truth ex nihilo. These two paradoxes are not new, but if we look at them carefully, we can draw new conclusions from them. In this way, a different light is shed on the relation between philosophy and art.
Graham Harman is part of the object-oriented and speculative realist movement. For Harman, objects aren't reducible to mere bundles of properties/qualities, or their various relations to and effects on, other objects. Instead, Harman understands the nature of objects as real independent substances in their own right, over and above their manifold appearances and qualities. Otherwise, objects lose their underlying identity as something real, and end up being mere appearances, analyzable in terms of something else more fundamental. This object-oriented approach leads Harman to a pluralistic vision of the world, in contrast to the more holistic and monistic tendency which has characterized much traditional and contemporary philosophy.
Credit goes to 'The Matter of Contradiction' for this. For more information, check out the following:http://lamatiere.tumblr.com/

Graham Harman. Black Holes. 2014

source: European Graduate School     2015年3月16日
http://www.egs.edu Graham Harman, Philosopher, talking about the thing-in-itself, black holes, withdrawn objects, Speculative Realism, Heidegger, correlationism, essence, Object Oriented Philosophy, the History of Philosophy, materialism. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe. 2014. Graham Harman.

Graham Harman. Speculative Realism. 2013

source: egsvideo  2013年12月04日
http://www.egs.edu/ Graham Harman, American philosopher, talking about speculative realism, philosophy, natural sciences, fine art, correlational circle, object, plasma. In the lecture Graham Harman discusses the concepts of phenomenology, pre-socratics, quality, in relationship to Bruno Latour, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Heidegger, Whitehead, Deleuze, Meillassoux, focusing on surplus, materialism, idealism. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe 2013 Graham Harman.

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. Harman is associated with Speculative Realism in philosophy, which was the name of a workshop that also included the philosophers Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Quentin Meillassoux.

Central to Harman's philosophy is the idea that real objects are inexhaustible: "A police officer eating a banana reduces this fruit to a present-at-hand profile of its elusive depth, as do a monkey eating the same banana, a parasite infecting it, or a gust of wind blowing it from a tree. Banana-being is a genuine reality in the world, a reality never exhausted by any relation to it by humans or other entities." (Harman 2005: 74). Because of this inexhaustibility, claims Harman, there is a metaphysical problem regarding how two objects can ever interact. His solution to this problem is to introduce the notion of "vicarious causation", according to which objects can only ever interact on the inside of an "intention" (which is also an object).

His works include Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (2002), Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures (2010), Circus Philosophicus (2010), Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (2012) and Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism (2013).