Graham Harman

American philosopher, founder of object-oriented ontology (OOO). Co-editor of The Speculative Turn (with Levi Bryant and Nick Srnicek, 2011); one of the original 2007 Goldsmiths College SR participants. Distinguishes himself from Meillassoux (whose "speculative materialism" Harman charges with overmining/undermining) by insisting on objects' withdrawal from all relations.

Key Points

  • Flat ontology: "all objects are equally objects; there is no privileged object" — undoes the privilege of the human as agent of meaningful encounters.
  • Sincerity of objects: Harman's reading of object-object encounters as having their own (non-cognitive) "sincerity"; per Morin (morin-2022-mp-nancy-sense-being Ch 5 §3), this is the reckless anthropomorphism counter-pole to MP's cautious-anthropomorphism.
  • Two reductionisms — overmining and undermining (Harman, "Road to Objects" 172): overmining = reducing objects to currently-accessible features / bundles of qualities / relations / events; undermining = reducing objects to their underlying matter / particles.
  • Charge against Nancy: "On Interface: Nancy's Weights and Masses" (in Gratton & Morin, eds., Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking) — accuses Nancy of overmining: Nancy's singularities have "no individual character outside their mutual touching and weighing"; the in-itself becomes a "unified whatever." Morin defends Nancy by distinguishing "nothing prior to relations" (true of Nancy) from "nothing but relations" (false of Nancy) — see whateverness-quelconque.

Connections

  • founder of object-oriented ontology.
  • contrasted with jean-luc-nancy — Harman insists objects must be withdrawn from relations to be deep; Nancy refuses both undermining and overmining without committing to withdrawal.
  • contrasted with quentin-meillassoux — Harman accuses Meillassoux of overmining; Meillassoux accuses Harman of insufficient rationalism.
  • defended-against by Morin — the whateverness-quelconque reading of Nancy is constructed precisely to defeat the Harman overmining charge.
  • one position among the speculative-realist family of post-2007 thinkers.

Open Questions

  • Is Harman's withdrawal-from-relations metaphysically tenable given Nancy's diagnosis (per Morin) that an object "withdrawn from relations" is indistinguishable from an undifferentiated substrate? This is the crux of the Harman/Nancy disagreement.
  • Does OOO's flat ontology amount to misanthropy (Cohen's diagnosis applied to Meillassoux, but applicable to Harman too)? OOO undoes anthropocentrism but does so by flattening — a different exit from the human centre than cautious-anthropomorphism.

Sources

  • morin-2022-mp-nancy-sense-being — Ch 5 §3 (sincerity of objects; reckless anthropomorphism); Ch 6 §3 (overmining charge against Nancy; Morin's defence).