Archive for March, 2009
Darkly Vitalistic Nature
The aim of a speculative realist philosophy of nature is to construct a minimalist metaphysics by way of an ontological cascade mirroring the cosmological progression of forces and matters. Dark vitalism, while not my own coinage, names the force of forces (or the One) not as a pure unification but the possibility of ‘isness’ itself […]
Filed under: Iain Hamilton Grant, Schelling, Speculative Realism | 2 Comments
Tags: philosophy of nature
Perhaps the phenomenological appeal that results from Kant’s critical philosophy is that it avoids the horror of knowing too much as well as the terror of not knowing. Both Husserl’s intentional passing through the world as well as Henry’s pure affectivity ignores a certain darkness – that of the inevitable heat death of the universe, […]
Filed under: Harman, Kant, Lacan, Speculative Realism | Leave a Comment
Tags: Henry, Physics
Dark Vitalism
In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari describe vitalism as split between an Idea that acts but is not and a force that is but does not act (p. 213). The recently coined dark vitalism or mechanistic vitalism (dark as in nihilistic but also as attached to the chemical darkness of Schelling’s unground and mechanistic […]
Filed under: Brassier, Deleuze, Iain Hamilton Grant, Meillassoux, Schelling, Speculative Realism | 12 Comments
Tags: chaos, vitalism
Complete Lies further elaborates the Grantian faction of Speculative Realism which leans towards vitalism and Deleuze (in Harman’s definition). A cold vitalism and a spectral vitalism are both noted and, while I may fall in the former I might be more tempted to go with emanationist in the sense of Plotinus (if the religiosity and […]
Filed under: Brassier, Deleuze, Iain Hamilton Grant, Schelling, Speculative Realism | 6 Comments
Tags: ligotti, lovecraft, nihilism
Naught Thought 