After Correlationism? Phenomenology and the Speculative Turn in Continental Philosophy (2023)

45th annual conference of the Phenomenological Association of Japan Meiji University, Tokyo October 29, 2023 After Correlationism? Phenomenology and the Speculative Turn in Continental Philosophy JUSSI BACKMAN (Tampere University, Finland) JUSSI BACKMAN, “Transcendental Idealism and Strong Correlationism: Meillassoux and the End of Heideggerian Finitude.” In Phenomenology and the Transcendental, edited by SARA HEINÄMAA, MIRJA HARTIMO, and TIMO MIETTINEN (New York: Routledge, 2014), 276 –94. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203797037 30/10/2023 | 2 speculative realism: a new movement originating within Western continental philosophy during the past 15 years ➢ starting point in a conference organized in April 2007 at Goldsmiths College, University of London ➢ main representatives: RAY BRASSIER, IAIN HAMILTON GRANT, GRAHAM HARMAN, QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX ➢ not a unified or cohesive movement, internally heterogeneous 30/10/2023 | 3 main themes of speculative realism: 1. opposition to the Kantian legacy of antirealism and idealism in contemporary Western philosophy ➢ especially in phenomenology but also in poststructuralism, Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy etc. 2. attempt to rehabilitate, in some form, the classical “speculative” philosophy proscribed by KANT’s critical philosophy ➢ insights into the fundamental nature of reality through the use of pure reason ➢ seeks alternatives to the dominant “critical” (Kantian) as well as “skeptical” (Humean) approaches 30/10/2023 | 4 various reactions to speculative realism ➢ hailed as a decisive “speculative turn” in continental philosophy • LEVI BRYANT, NICK SRNICEK, AND GRAHAM HARMAN (eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (2011) • TOM SPARROW, The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism (2014) ➢ phenomenologists have mainly been unimpressed by speculative realism as a movement and its theses • DAN ZAHAVI, “The End of What? Phenomenology vs. Speculative Realism” (2016) 30/10/2023 | 5 here, however, I will look at the some of the most subtle and innovative arguments of speculative realism that have so far largely been ignored by both supporters and critics ➢ QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX (After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, 2006): the most important, sophisticated, and philosophically ambitious work of speculative realism 30/10/2023 | 6 MEILLASSOUX: a large part of contemporary Western philosophy is dominated by the legacy of KANT’s critical and transcendental philosophy ➢ German idealism, neo-Kantianism, (post)structuralism, Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy, phenomenology ➢ the Kantian tradition is dominated by correlationism ➢ correlationism: an approach that asserts the “idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other” 30/10/2023 | 7 correlationism is not necessarily idealism: does not necessarily reduce being to thinking/consciousness ➢ correlationism simply maintains that both being and thinking can be considered only in terms of their reciprocal correlation • being is meaningful givenness to thinking/consciousness • thinking/consciousness is intentionally oriented to being ➢ in this sense, all phenomenology is committed to correlationism ➢ Heideggerian phenomenology is a culmination of correlationism 30/10/2023 | 8 KANT’s “weak” correlationism ➢ “Copernican revolution”: turn from “dogmatic” metaphysical study of the fundamental structures of being to the study of the correlation between being and thinking ➢ turn from transcendental realism to transcendental idealism: the transcendental structures of objective reality are not structures of things in themselves but of the correlation ➢ we only have access to reality insofar as it correlates with our cognitive faculties, sensibility and understanding ➢ however, non-correlational, transcendent, and absolute “things in themselves” remain for KANT an intelligible and necessary notion, even though they are unknowable 30/10/2023 | 9 German idealism (HEGEL, FICHTE, SCHELLING): speculative critique of KANT’s critical attempt to establish the limits of theoretical reason ➢ “things in themselves” are a contradictory notion ➢ the correlation itself is an absolute “inand-for-itself ” ➢ absolute idealism: subjectivity as the fundamental and absolute, conceptual and rational level of reality ➢ we have access to the absolute through self-consciousness 30/10/2023 | 10 HUSSERL: “transcendental turn” between Logical Investigations (1900–1901) and Ideas, vol. 1 (1913) ➢ transcendental phenomenology as a continuation of KANT’s project ➢ critical development of KANT’s transcendental idealism: critique of psychological and anthropological vestiges in KANT ➢ the world is constituted by transcendental subjectivity as relatively transcendent ➢ reality is never purely immanent or immediately present to consciousness, but always exceeds it 30/10/2023 | 11 however, an absolutely transcendent level of “things in themselves,” entirely inaccessible to subjectivity, is not a meaningful concept for HUSSERL ➢ HUSSERL (The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 1936): the great task of modern philosophy is to find an “absolutely universal science of absolute foundations” ➢ this absolute foundation is “knowing subjectivity as the primal locus [Urstätte] of all objective formations of sense” ➢ transcendental idealism: the absolute is the correlation itself ➢ HUSSERL must therefore be counted as an absolute idealist in MEILLASSOUX’s sense 30/10/2023 | 12 Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being [Sein], whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense and being. . . . Carried out with this systematic concreteness, phenomenology is eo ipso “transcendental idealism,” though in a fundamentally and essentially new sense. It is not . . . a Kantian idealism, which believes it can keep open, at least as a limiting concept, the possibility of a world of things in themselves. HUSSERL, Husserliana, vol. 1, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), 117–18; Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. D. Cairns (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1977), 84– 86. 30/10/2023 | 13 HEIDEGGER: HUSSERL’s notion of transcendental subjectivity disregards the facticity of the human being as Dasein ➢ Dasein characterized by finitude, historical situatedness, context-specificity, and singularity ➢ Being and Time (1927): attempts to rethink the correlation in terms of Dasein’s dynamic, contextual, and finite temporal structure (Zeitlichkeit) ➢ the temporal structure of Dasein correlates with the temporal structure (Temporalität) of being itself ➢ correlation between Dasein’s temporal understanding of being (Seinsverständnis) and the temporal meaning or sense (Sinn) of being 30/10/2023 | 14 temporality or temporalization (Zeitigung) as the process of contextualization that makes meaningful situations meaningful in a singular way ➢ this process makes the correlation of being and thinking (Dasein, human being) possible ➢ the later HEIDEGGER rethinks this process as Ereignis, the event or happening of the correlation that lets being and the human being “belong together” ➢ however, this event is not a self-identical metaphysical absolute but singular and heterogeneous ➢ the event is without absolutely necessary grounds: radically factical 30/10/2023 | 15 We must experience simply this lending [Eignen] in which the human being and being [Sein] lend themselves to each other [einander ge-eignet sind], that is, we must enter into what we call the event [Ereignis]. . . . The event surrenders [vereignet] the human being and being to their essential togetherness. HEIDEGGER, Identität und Differenz [1957], 12th ed. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2002), 24, 27; Identity and Difference, trans. J. Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 36, 39. Translation modified. The event [Er-eignis] and the possibility of the why! Can the “why” still be made into a tribunal before which beyng [Seyn] is to be placed? . . . Why being? From within it itself. . . . Ground-less [grund-los]; unfathomable [abgründig]. HEIDEGGER, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) [1936–38], ed. F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989), 509; Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. R. Rojcewicz and D. Vallega-Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 400. Tr. 30/10/2023 | 16 mod. MEILLASSOUX: HEIDEGGER (together with WITTGENSTEIN) is a key representative of contemporary “strong” correlationism ➢ strong correlationism gives up KANT’S absolute “things in themselves” as well as the absolute subjectivity of German idealism and HUSSERL ➢ strong correlationism: the correlation itself is not given as absolutely necessary but as a phenomenological fact ➢ for strong correlationism, philosophy does not have access to any kind of absolute: thinking is essentially finite, historically and culturally situated 30/10/2023 | 17 for HEIDEGGER, a central aspect of the finitude of the correlation is mortality ➢ Being and Time: Dasein’s temporal being is structured by being-towards-death (Sein zum Tode) ➢ all futural possibilities are delimited by the constant possibility of death as the “possibility of impossibility” ➢ not only the individual but the phenomenological community is “mortal” in the sense of being temporally and historically limited 30/10/2023 | 18 in other words, for strong correlationism, subjectivity is characterized by a constitutive relationship to the possibility of its own cessation and absence ➢ the correlation has a constitutive relationship to the possibility of its own absence ➢ this death or absence cannot, of course, become phenomenologically present and actual: it remains a limit-possibility, an “ultimate” possibility 30/10/2023 | 19 MEILLASSOUX: such a limit-possibility that can never be actual is a contradictory concept, just like KANT’s “things in themselves” ➢ to say that the correlation is constitutively factical, finite, and mortal is to say that its absence is a real possibility: we can think a reality without the correlation ➢ the only logical alternative to making the correlation absolutely necessary is to make it contingent, that is, really capable of not being ➢ if we say that the correlation is contingent, this contingency itself must be absolutely necessary: saying that it is itself contingent would lead to logical contradiction 30/10/2023 | 20 thus, MEILLASSOUX argues, Heideggerian strong correlationism leads to his own speculative materialism ➢ the key principle of speculative materialism is the principle of contingency: it is absolutely necessary that all things, including the correlation of being and thinking, are contingent ➢ “speculative” means here an absolute ontological principle based on pure reason ➢ “materialism” means here the thesis that reality can be conceived without a correlation with thinking 30/10/2023 | 21 of course, a reality that is not correlated with thinking/subjectivity cannot be conceived phenomenologically, from a firstpersonal, experiential perspective ➢ MEILLASSOUX asserts that it can only be considered formally and mathematically, especially through set theory ➢ with his mentor ALAIN BADIOU, MEILLASSOUX insists that ontology, the study of being qua being, must become mathematics 30/10/2023 | 22 it should be noted that MEILLASSOUX’s opposition to correlationism and phenomenology is based on his specific understanding of modernity ➢ for MEILLASSOUX, the true Copernican revolution of modern science has been based on the mathematization of nature and mathematical physics ➢ Kantian correlationism has been a “Ptolemaic counterrevolution” that reinstalls human thinking at the center of the universe ➢ Heideggerian “strong” correlationism has further introduced a “postmodern” relativism that endangers the ideals of the Enlightenment 30/10/2023 | 23 MEILLASSOUX’s purely logical argument is limited to Heideggerian strong correlationism ➢ does not show Husserlian transcendental idealism to be self-contradicting ➢ MEILLASSOUX’s argument further rests on a presupposition that HEIDEGGER would not accept: that it is impossible to think of something as factical and finite without conceiving its absence as a “real” possibility 30/10/2023 | 24 MEILLASSOUX’s speculative materialism ultimately rests on the same presuppositions as German speculative idealism: 1. it is impossible to delimit reason or thinking from the inside without having already transgressed the limit; thus 2. finitude must always ultimately be overcome in philosophy: thinking cannot remain in a finite position 30/10/2023 | 25 

After Correlationism? Phenomenology and the Speculative Turn in Continental Philosophy1 Jussi Backman (Tampere University, Finland) Talk at the 45th annual conference of the Phenomenological Association of Japan, Meiji University, Tokyo, October 29, 2023. During the past 15 years, a new philosophical movement has emerged in Western philosophy, generally known under the title “speculative realism.” A starting point for this movement was a conference held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in April 2007; the movement is chiefly associated with the four main participants of that conference, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux.2 The philosophical projects of these thinkers are quite different, and because of its internal heterogeneity, the existence of speculative realism as a cohesive movement has often been called into question. Its chief unifying themes are a sharp opposition to the predominance of the Kantian legacy of antirealism in contemporary Western philosophy—especially phenomenology—and an attempt to rehabilitate, in some form, the classical “speculative” thinking proscribed by Kant’s critical philosophy, that is, philosophical attempts to attain insights into the fundamental nature of reality by the use of pure reason alone. While proponents of speculative realism have hailed the movement as a decisive “speculative turn” in contemporary Western thought (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 2011), even as death-blow to the fundamental antirealism of phenomenology (Sparrow 2014), phenomenologists have, unsurprisingly, been mainly unimpressed by the movement and its theses.3 I myself feel, however, that the most subtle and innovative arguments of the new speculative movement have largely been ignored, or at least dramatically simplified, by both supporters and critics. I therefore want to take a closer look at what I find to be the hitherto most important, sophisticated, and philosophically ambitious work of speculative realism—a relatively short book by Meillassoux (2006b), translated into English as After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. 1 This talk is based on a previously published article (Backman 2014). A transcript of this conference has been published as Brassier, Grant, Harman, and Meillassoux 2007. 3 Dan Zahavi (2016) assesses speculative realism’s critique of phenomenology as superficial, simplistic, and lacking novelty. 2 1 In his preface to the work, Meillassoux’s mentor Alain Badiou, an important background figure of speculative realism, maintains that it does nothing less than introduce an entirely new avenue of thinking in the contemporary philosophical context: a new alternative to the three dominant modes of philosophy enumerated by Kant (CPR B xxxv–xxxvi), that is, dogmatic, skeptical, and critical philosophy (Badiou 2006a, 11; 2008, vii). After Hume’s attack on classical dogmatic metaphysics and Kant’s critical reaction, the mainstream options in Western philosophy have consisted of (1) the Humean legacy of skeptical and antimetaphysical stances and (2) the various developments of Kantian critical and transcendental philosophy. The Humean skeptical legacy is visible in contemporary empiricism, positivism, and naturalism, which tend to limit the role of philosophy and assert the primacy of empirical science. The Kantian critical and transcendental legacy, on the other hand, encompasses orientations such as German idealism, neo-Kantianism, structuralism, Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy—and phenomenology. According to Meillassoux, the Kantian path has been basically committed to different forms of what he terms correlationism. By this, Meillassoux means a general epistemological approach that asserts, in different ways, the “idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other” (Meillassoux 2006b, 18; 2008a, 5). Correlationism is a broader and more inclusive category than “idealism.” Unlike the idealist, the correlationist does not necessarily seek to refer being back to acts of consciousness or subjective processes of meaning-constitution. The correlationist is simply committed to the view that being and thinking can only be considered in terms of their reciprocal correlation with each other. Any notion of being as entirely separate from its givenness to thinking or consciousness is either epistemically inaccessible or simply incoherent. Thinking or consciousness, on the other hand, can only be conceived as intentional, that is, irreducibly oriented to an object, a being-correlate. Being, for Meillassoux’s correlationist, can only be conceived as meaningful givenness to thinking, and thinking is inseparable from its receptivity to meaningful being. I will here look specifically at Meillassoux’s concept of correlationism, characterized by Graham Harman as a “devastating summary of post-Kantian thought” (Harman 2007, 105). For Meillassoux, the phenomenological approach is inseparably committed to correlationism, and Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology is a culmination of correlationism. I will first briefly discuss Meillassoux’s account of the main types of correlationism, in particular, its “strong” variety, and its relationship to “weak” correlationism and absolute idealism. I then evaluate to 2 what extent it is justified to characterize Husserlian as well as Heideggerian phenomenology as a continuation of Kantian correlationism. I will finally look critically at Meillassoux’s presentation of his own “speculative materialism” as a Hegelian Aufhebung of Heideggerian strong correlationism. 1. Correlationism, weak and strong Meillassoux distinguishes two main versions of correlationism, a “weak” and a “strong” one. These versions are challenged, respectively, by two corresponding modes of speculative thought, speculative idealism (the absolute idealism of Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling) and speculative materialism (Meillassoux’s own position). For Meillassoux, Kant’s transcendental idealism is a weak form of correlationism. It is committed to the basic thesis of correlationism, the “primacy of correlation”: we only have access to reality insofar as it is phenomenal and experiential, that is, to the extent that it correlates with the transcendental structures of our cognitive faculties (for Kant, sensibility and understanding). Kant’s correlationism is “weak” because it does not give the correlation an absolute status: the notion of a noncorrelational and absolute realm of “things in themselves,” of a “transcendental object” as the nonappearing cause of appearances, remains intelligible for Kant, even though we can have no experiential or cognitive access to any positive content of such a notion (Meillassoux 2006b, 42, 43, 48–52; 2008a, 30, 32, 35–38).4 However, Kant’s position soon lent itself to a speculative overcoming by the German idealists, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling. Speculative idealism accepts the primacy of correlation: we have no access to a reality that is not a correlate of thought. However, it opposes the attempt of Kant’s critical philosophy to make human cognition finite, to establish the limits of thinking and knowledge. The German idealists criticize Kant’s position for being ultimately contradictory: the very notion of transcendent “things in themselves” is an intellectual abstraction and thus itself already a correlate of thought.5 Instead, speculative idealism makes the correlation itself absolute as an “in-and-for-itself”: we have access to the absolute level of reality through self-consciousness, through our awareness of the rational and conceptual activity of For Kant’s argument for the intelligibility and necessity of the notion of “things in themselves,” suggesting that while the validity of this notion is theoretically unknowable, it could be justified on a practical basis, see CPR B xxvi–xxvii. On the transcendental object, tentatively identified with the “thing in itself” and the noumenon, see CPR A 288–89, 366, 494; B 344–45, 522–23. 5 See, e.g., Hegel 1985, 31; 2010b, 27: “In its more consistent [Fichtean] form, transcendental idealism did recognize the nothingness of the spectral thing-in-itself, this abstract shadow divorced from all content left over by critical philosophy, and its goal was to destroy it completely.” Cf. Hegel 1985, 47; 2010b, 41. 4 3 subjectivity in ourselves.6 In addition to Hegel and Schelling, Meillassoux also mentions Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze as “absolute idealists,” thinkers who absolutize the correlation under the headings of will, will to power, or life (Meillassoux 2006b, 26–27, 51– 52, 71; 2008a, 10–11, 37–38, 51–52). Certain remarks by Meillassoux suggest that Husserl is also to be included in the category of absolute idealism, even though this is left ambiguous (Meillassoux 2006b, 169; 2008a, 122). The other, “strong” version of correlationism is a post-Hegelian and post-Nietzschean development. It agrees with Kant on the primacy of the correlation and with speculative idealism that any notion of a transcendent reality “in itself” must be given up as unintelligible. For strong correlationism, “to be” signifies “to be given as a correlate of thinking.” Being in an absolute, correlation-independent sense is not a meaningful concept. But in contrast to speculative idealism, strong correlationism also refuses to make the correlation of being and thinking an absolute reality. Against Hegel, strong correlationism maintains that we are unable to derive the correlation and its structures of meaning and meaning-constitution from any absolutely necessary principle.7 The fact that being and thinking are correlated, that there is meaningful givenness of being to consciousness, must be simply accepted as a fact. This is the additional principle of strong correlationism that Meillassoux terms the “facticity of correlation” (Meillassoux 2006b, 48–58; 2008a, 35–42). Strong correlationism thus denies altogether philosophy’s capacity to make statements with a claim to absolute validity. Thinking has no access to anything absolute; even the correlation itself is given as a mere fundamental fact. For Meillassoux, the leading representatives of strong correlationism are Heidegger and Wittgenstein (Meillassoux 2006b, 56– 67; 2008a, 41–48). Using a Heideggerian conception of “metaphysics” as a mode of thinking reality in terms of an absolutely necessary entity or mode of being—the approach that Heidegger terms ontotheology8—Meillassoux points out that strong correlationism is no longer really a “metaphysical” position (Meillassoux 2006b, 46–68; 2008a, 33–49). Strong correlationism is the postmetaphysical, late modern culmination of the Kantian and phenomenological tradition of transcendental philosophy. 6 See Hegel 1985, 18–25; 2010b, 9–17. For Hegel’s critique of Kant’s failure to derive the categories, see Hegel 1992, 79–80; 2010a, 86. On the impossibility of such a derivation, see Heidegger 1998b, 55–56; 1997d, 39–40. 8 For Heidegger’s account of ontotheology, see, e.g., Heidegger 1991b, 207–10; 1998a, 311–15; 2002a, 31–67; 2002b, 42–74. 7 4 2. Weak correlationism and absolute idealism: Kant and Husserl The expression “transcendental” has its roots in medieval interpretations of Aristotle’s account of being and unity as absolutely universal determinations that apply to every possible instance of “to be” and thus “transcend” even the most general categories and genera of beings.9 The Scholastics accordingly referred to these transcategorial notions as “transcendentals” (transcendentia; in late Scholasticism, transcendentalia). In this sense, metaphysics has been a “transcendental” study ever since Aristotle; Kant himself speaks of the “transcendental philosophy of the ancients” (CPR B 113). Kant’s “Copernican revolution” is first and foremost the turn from transcendental realism—the view that the transcendental structures of objects are structures of things in themselves—to the approach of transcendental idealism, which sees them as structures of the correlation, of the way in which thinking constitutes and organizes the data that are given to it. Heidegger emphasizes that for Kant, transcendental philosophy remains a name for a critical form of metaphysics (Heidegger 1997d, 11; 1998b, 16–17). In the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (CPR A 11) points out that the study of the a priori conditions of the experience of objects is a study of the conditions of possibility of objects as such: the transcendentally structured experiential reality is objectivity as such.10 Husserl’s account, in Logical Investigations, of ideal objectivities and of categorial intuition is importantly different from the Kantian and neo-Kantian approaches, which tend to limit the realm of objectivity to sensory experience. While Husserl, too, regards sensory intuition as the most basic form of intuition, he shows that the ideal and nonsensory aspects and structures of experience constitute relatively independent domains that are also intended as objectivities in themselves (Husserl 1984, 657–93; 2001b, 271–94). Husserl notes that Kant’s basic failure to distinguish between signifying and intuitive acts, that is, between intending an object and its intuitive self-givenness, prevented Kant from recognizing the mode of givenness of categorial idealities (Husserl 1984, 731–33; 2001b, 318–19). Moreover, Kant and his Neo-Kantian followers lack the proper method of phenomenological reduction and therefore fail to base the transcendental project on an adequate descriptive analysis of the constitution of relevant basic concepts and principles.11 However, despite these fundamental differences, Husserl notes in Logical Investigations that he feels “quite close” to Kant (Husserl 1984, 732; 2001b, 319). This affinity with the Kantian 9 Aristotle, Metaphysics 3.3.998b22–27; 10.2.1054a9–19; 11.1.1059b27–34. Kant’s “transcendental object,” by contrast, is the preobjective cause of the givenness of experience required to account for the receptive and essentially finite nature of human sensibility (Kant, CPR A 494; B 522). 11 For Husserl’s critique of Kant, see, in particular, Husserl 1954, 93–123, 194–212; 1970, 91–121, 191–208. 10 5 project grew into what is known as Husserl’s “transcendental turn” between the Logical Investigations (1900–1901) and the first volume of Ideas (1913). Phenomenology now becomes increasingly identified with the transcendental program that Kant undertook but, due to his methodological and conceptual shortcomings and traditionalisms, was unable to complete. “Transcendental philosophy” is for Husserl a name for “the original motif . . . which through Descartes confers meaning upon all modern philosophies . . . of inquiring back into the ultimate source of all the formations of knowledge, . . . of the knower’s reflecting upon himself and his knowing life” (Husserl 1954, 100; 1970, 97). Grounded purely in this “knowing life” of the ego as an “ultimate source,” truly transcendental philosophy is “ultimately grounded”; the “true being” of the world is thereby known “in my own cognitive formations” (Husserl 1954, 101; 1970, 98; translation modified). For Kant, the transcendental structures of accessibility “mediate” between the inaccessible (transcendent) and the accessible (immanent). For Husserl, the “transcendentality” of subjectivity is related precisely to its capacity for constituting the world as relatively transcendent, that is, as a domain that always exceeds immediate and purely immanent presence to consciousness (Husserl 1950, 65; 1977, 26; cf. Carr 2007, 41). The “cause” or “ultimate source” of all knowledge is the correlation itself: “a truly radical grounding of philosophy” consists in a return to “knowing subjectivity as the primal locus [Urstätte] of all objective formations of sense and ontic validities” (Husserl 1954, 101–102; 1970, 98–99). Transcendental phenomenology fulfills the requirements of true transcendental idealism by giving up the anthropological and psychological vestiges inherent in Kant’s weak version of correlationism and by absolutizing the correlation as a “primal locus” of meaning. Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being [Sein], whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense and being. . . . Carried out with this systematic concreteness, phenomenology is eo ipso “transcendental idealism,” though in a fundamentally and essentially new sense. It is not . . . a Kantian idealism, which believes it can keep open, at least as a limiting concept, the possibility of a world of things in themselves. (Husserl 1950, 117–18; 1977, 84–86) A notion of an absolute transcendental subjectivity encompassing all imaginable meaningful being is required to accomplish the quest for an absolutely universal science of absolute foundations. This quest, Husserl tells us in Crisis, has been handed down to us by the great philosophical tradition of modernity; should we renounce this task, we can no longer remain 6 serious philosophers (Husserl 1954, 15; 1970, 17). For Husserl, the absolute foundation sought by philosophy is to be found in the correlation itself. Husserl must therefore be included within the ambit of speculative or absolute idealism in Meillassoux’s sense: Husserl’s position is an absolutized version of correlationism that no longer accepts Kant’s transcendent “things in themselves”. As Heidegger suggests in “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (1964), even though Husserl’s phenomenological method is worlds apart from Hegelian speculative dialectic, the “heart of the matter” (die Sache selbst) is for both Hegel and Husserl absolute subjectivity, that is, the absolutized correlation (Heidegger 2000b, 69–71; 2002d, 62–64). 3. Strong correlationism: Heidegger and the facticity of the correlation Heidegger’s relationship to the heritage of Kantian transcendental idealism is complex. He was, from the beginning of his independent career, critical of Husserl’s notions of transcendental subjectivity and of the transcendental reduction. 12 The main reason for this was the concern that the transcendental approach risks disregarding the finitude, historical situatedness, contextspecificity, and singularity—in a word, the facticity—of human being, or Dasein, in the terminology of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. There is, however, a sense in which the “transcendental reduction” designates, for Heidegger, a move that is indispensable for genuine philosophical study. This is simply the turn from already constituted objectivities to the process of their constitution as meaningful, in Heideggerian terms, from an “ontic” to an “ontological” approach, from determinate beings or entities to their being (Heidegger 1982, 21; 1997c, 29). With regard to beings (Seiendes), being (Sein) is “transcendental”: As the fundamental theme of philosophy, being [Sein] is not a genus of beings [Seienden]; yet it pertains to every being. Its “universality” must be sought in a higher sphere. Being and being-structure lie beyond every being and every possible character that a being may have. Being is the transcendens pure and simple. The transcendence of the being of Dasein is a distinctive one since in it lies the possibility and necessity of the most radical individuation. Every disclosure of being as the transcendens is transcendental knowledge. Phenomenological truth (disclosedness of being) is veritas transcendentalis. (Heidegger 2001, 38; 2010, 35–36; translation modified) Heidegger here seemingly returns to the Aristotelian-Scholastic notion of being as a superuniversal transcendental term. However, as the quotation marks around the word 12 See, e.g., Heidegger 1992, 100–101, 109–10, 114; 1994a, 79–81, 273–75; 1994b, 137–39, 150–51, 157–58; 2005, 58–59, 210–11. On Heidegger’s ambivalent stance toward the Husserlian reductions, see Crowell 2001, 197–202. 7 “universal” indicate, “transcendence” and “transcendental” are used here in a decidedly nontraditional sense. Being does not “transcend” beings in the way in which the maximally universal transcends particulars. Rather, it transcends them in the way in which the temporal horizon or context of a meaningful experience transcends the focal point of that experience. 13 The main aim of Heidegger’s Being and Time is to show how the correlation between being and thinking is based on Dasein’s ecstatically temporal structure. In its most “authentic” (eigentlich), that is, ontologically primordial, mode of relating to its world and itself, Dasein encounters the present as a singular “instant” (Augenblick) of meaningfulness in the framework of a concrete situation involving specific future possibilities (Zukunft) and a specific and factical background of “already-having-been” (Gewesenheit).14 This context-specificity is the “radical individuation” mentioned by Heidegger in the passage cited above.15 The temporal-contextual structure of Dasein, its “timeliness” (Zeitlichkeit), correlates with the temporal-contextual structure of being itself, its “temporality” (Temporalität; Heidegger 1982, 307; 1997c, 436). This temporality was to be disclosed as ultimately identical with the meaning or “sense” (Sinn) of being as such. Any meaningful presence is disclosed to Dasein as meaningful only in the dynamic context of singular temporal situations. [W]e project being . . . upon temporality [Temporalität]. . . . All ontological propositions have the character of temporal [temporale] truth, veritas temporalis. . . . [T]ranscendence, on its part, is rooted in timeliness [Zeitlichkeit] and thus in temporality [Temporalität]. Hence time is the primary horizon of transcendental science, of ontology, or, in short, it is the transcendental horizon. (Heidegger 1982, 323; 1997c, 459–60; translation modified) The context-specific, singular disclosures of meaningful being are not particular instances of a universal “being as such” that would be ideally represented by an absolute and ideal being that remains beyond temporal and contextual determinations. Rather, temporality as the meaning or sense of being is the process of contextualization and singularization that generates singular meaning-situations and thereby lets being (the givenness of meaning) and thinking (receptivity to meaning) belong together. In this sense, the temporality of Being and Time is what Heidegger in his later thinking calls the event (Ereignis).16 In Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger makes a clear distinction between “ontological” (Aristotelian-Scholastic) transcendence and the “fundamental-ontological” transcendence of Being and Time as Dasein’s exposure to the “openness of beings”—that is, their contextuality (Heidegger 1989, 217; 2012, 170.) 14 On the instant (Augenblick), see, in particular, Heidegger 2001, 335–50; 2010, 320–34. 15 On Dasein’s singularization (Vereinzelung) in the instant, see, in particular, Heidegger 1983, 251; 1995, 169; cf. 2001, 338–39; 2010, 323–24. 16 In a later marginal note to Being and Time, Heidegger points out: “[T]ranscendens of course not—in spite of all the metaphysical resonances—the Scholastic and Greek-Platonic koinon [common], rather transcendence as the ecstatic— timeliness [Zeitlichkeit]—temporality [Temporalität]. . . . However, transcendence from the truth of beyng [Seyns]: the event 13 8 In his later work, Heidegger ended up discarding terms such as “ecstatic” and “existence,” as well as “transcendence” and “transcendental,” as potentially misleading.17 The later Heidegger emphasizes that there is no primordial point of immediate presence or immanence to consciousness that would subsequently be “transcended” or “exceeded” toward a horizon. Rather, the focal point of a meaningful situation is constituted on the basis of a nexus of references, a background context of meaning-relations.18 Being and beings are no longer opposed in the sense of a universal and particulars.19 A being is an aspect of being as a process, the focal point of a dynamic meaning-context that cannot be conceived apart from that context.20 The only “universal” feature of the singular situations of meaningful being is their uniqueness and singularity; only as singular do they form a historical tradition of relative continuity and relative transformation.21 However, there is at least one important sense in which even the later Heidegger remains an heir of Kantian transcendental idealism: Ereignis remains a name for the correlation between being and thinking (Dahlstrom 2005, 47–51; Meillassoux 2006b, 22; 2008a, 8). Ereignis designates the “belonging-together” (Zusammengehören) of being and the human being, their irreducible and inseparable reciprocity. The Heideggerian event of being, the dynamic process of the temporal contextualization of meaningful presence, remains an event in which meaningful presence is given, and thus cannot be thought independently of a recipient, a receptive dimension. However, the event is not a metaphysical “absolute” in the sense of being something purely self-identical and self-referential, completely “absolved” from all constitutive relations and references to anything other than itself.22 An event is never “identical” with itself. Rather, Ereignis is a name for the radical nonabsoluteness—the processual, contextual, and singular character—of all givenness of and receptivity to meaningful presence.23 This is what Heidegger strives to articulate in his 1957 lecture “The Thesis of Identity,” which is perhaps his most important account of Ereignis and a key text of strong correlationism. As the dynamic process of [Ereignis]” (Heidegger 2001, 440n[a]; 2010, 36n; translation modified). The obsolete German orthography Seyn, which was still used by Hegel and Hölderlin at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is used by Heidegger in his work of the 1930s and 1940s (albeit not in an entirely consistent way) to designate the “postmetaphysical” notion of being as Ereignis from being as it was conceived within the metaphysical tradition. Following an established convention, I render this term with the equally obsolete Middle English spelling ‘beyng.’ 17 See Heidegger 1989, 217, 322; 1991a, 43; 1991c, 77–83; 1997b, 133–43; 2012, 169–70, 255. For an elaborate discussion of the earlier and later Heidegger’s ambivalent relationship to the transcendental tradition, see Dahlstrom 2005. Michael Inwood (1999, 227) stresses that Heidegger “rejects the word ‘transcendence’ rather than the concept.” Cf. Malpas 2007. 18 See Heidegger 1971, 178–79; 2000a, 173–74. 19 See Heidegger 1989, 474; 1996, 134n(c); 1998c, 105n(c); 2012, 373. 20 See Heidegger 1989, 472–74; 2012, 372–373. 21 See Heidegger 1989, 55, 66, 90–91; 1997a, 128; 2006, 108; 2012, 45, 53, 72. 22 Cf. Heidegger 2002c, 102; 2003, 136. 23 See Heidegger 2000b, 53; 2002d, 49. Cf. Agamben 1999, 116–37. 9 correlation between being and thinking, Ereignis is a heterogeneous and singular unity, a belonging-together of givenness and receptivity. We must experience simply this appropriating [Eignen] in which the human being and being [Sein] lend themselves to each other [einander ge-eignet sind], that is, we must enter into what we call the event [Ereignis]. . . . The word [sc. Ereignis] is now used as a singulare tantum [i.e., a noun used only in the singular]. What it indicates takes place only in the singular [Einzahl], no, not in any number, but uniquely [einzig]. . . . The event surrenders [vereignet] the human being and being to their essential togetherness. (Heidegger 2002a, 24, 25, 27; 2002b, 36, 38, 39; translation modified) The event of correlation, Ereignis, is the “ground” of meaningful presence, but it can itself no longer be “grounded,” given further “grounds” or “reasons.” That the correlation takes place at all, that there is any meaningful givenness at all, is a radical fact; it resists the question “Why?” which can only be asked of particular things. “The event [Er-eignis] and the possibility of the why! Can the ‘why’ still be made into a tribunal before which beyng [Seyn] is to be placed? . . . Why beyng? From within it itself. . . . Ground-less [grund-los]; unfathomable [abgründig]” (Heidegger 1989, 509; 2012, 400; translation modified). Heidegger here explicitly subscribes to the additional principle of strong correlationism: the facticity of the correlation. 4. From strong correlationism to speculative materialism: Meillassoux’s argument from finitude A central aspect of the facticity of the correlation in Heidegger’s strong correlationism is its finitude. In the fundamental ontology of Being and Time, Dasein’s being is structurally modified by its mortality, by being-towards-death (Sein zum Tode), that is, by an awareness of the constant possibility of its own absence. It is this awareness of mortality that first individualizes Dasein as a specific, situated, and finite “I” (Heidegger 2001, 260–67, 316–23; 2010, 249–55, 302–9). Mortality functions precisely as the “guarantee” of the finitude, nonabsoluteness, and facticity constitutive of all meaningful thinking. In Heidegger’s analysis, the correlation of being and thinking is constitutively structured by a relationship to the possibility of the absence of the correlation. This constitutive relation to one’s own death as a possibility most clearly distinguishes Heidegger’s strong correlationism from absolute idealism. For Husserl, death can only be an empirical event, the cessation of the factual life of an empirical individual, never a transcendental, constitutive relationship that thinking has to the possibility of its own absence: “[T]he process of living on, and the ego that lives on, are immortal—notabene, the pure 10 transcendental ego, and not the empirical world-ego that can very well die” (Husserl 1966, 378; 2001a, 467). Heidegger’s concept of being-towards-death, however, implies that all “living on” is structured precisely by the constant possibility of its own cessation, of its own absence, and precisely thereby individuated into one’s own finite and singular futural horizon. Even though this absence is, of course, never phenomenologically “present,” never experientially given as such, its possibility, the possibility of impossibility—of the total absence of the horizon of one’s own possibilities—as the ultimate possibility, is constantly present. Death, for Dasein, is a pure, ultimate, and supreme possibility in that it is experienced exclusively as a possibility, never as a present-at-hand actuality: it is never actualized within existential time but functions precisely as a limit of time.24 In this sense, the account of being-toward-death is an integral part of Heidegger’s argument for the ontological priority of future over the present: death is precisely a future that can never be present, the ever-open extremity of Dasein’s futurity as the open dimension of possibilities, a possibility that surpasses all actualities. The key argument of Meillassoux’s After Finitude (Meillassoux 2006b, 69–86; 2008, 50–63) focuses on this notion of the constitutive finitude and constitutive mortality of thinking and of the correlation between being and thinking. It aims to show that Heideggerian strong correlationism ultimately contradicts itself. Strong correlationism, Meillassoux maintains, holds on to two incompatible principles. It insists, one the one hand, on the primacy of correlation: being can only be conceived as meaningful presence to human thinking, all givenness of being presupposes a human recipient. On the other hand, it holds to the facticity of correlation: that human thinking is constitutively finite, constantly aware of the possibility of its own absence. For Meillassoux, we can only conceive something as possible if we can conceive it as actual. Conceiving my own death as the limit of my own openness to meaningful presence presupposes that I can in some way conceive what lies beyond the limit, in other words, that I can conceive a situation in which I am dead and my first-personal phenomenological perspective on being is gone. For the Husserlian approach, this is not a problem since subjectivity will live on in the form of the intersubjective community. But the Heideggerian strong correlationist, who holds that thinking is constitutively finite, will insist that our entire community is finite and mortal. In we refuse to be absolute idealists, who hold that the correlation is absolutely necessary and that reality can only be conceived as a correlate of consciousness, we are compelled to say that the 24 Heidegger 2001, 261–62; 2010, 250–51: “[W]e must characterize being-toward-death as a being toward a possibility, toward an eminent possibility of Dasein itself. . . . As possibility, death gives Dasein nothing to ‘be actualized’ and nothing which it itself could be as something real. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every mode of comportment toward…, of every way of existing. [T]his possibility offers no support for becoming intent on something, for ‘picturing’ for oneself the actuality that is possible and so forgetting its possibility” (translation modified). 11 total absence of the correlation, of all meaningful experience, is for us a possibility. This is what the principle of the facticity of the correlation ultimately means: that the correlation between being and thinking is a contingent fact and that a reality without this correlation is conceivable. According to Meillassoux’s argument, the only way for the Heideggerian approach to consistently distinguish itself from the Husserlian approach—or, more generally, for strong correlationism to distinguish itself from absolute idealism—is to admit that thinking does indeed take into account the actual possibility of a reality that does not include it and that cannot be regarded as a correlate of its thinking. In holding to the facticity and finitude of the correlation the strong correlationist has already in fact transgressed the correlational realm of phenomenal meaning an entered into a relationship with an absolute, noncorrelational realm of being. The strong correlationist is ultimately committed to the view that the correlation is contingent, nonnecessary and really capable of not being. But how are these states [mortality, annihilation, becoming-wholly-other in death] conceivable as possibilities? On account of the fact that we are able to think—by dint of the absence of any reason for our being—a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbors the possibility of our own not-being. . . . [I]f I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the [absolute] idealist. (Meillassoux 2006b, 77–78; 2008a, 57) To admit that one conceives the correlation itself as contingent, as Meillassoux forces the strong correlationist to do, has radical and fundamental implications. To admit this is to admit that one ultimately conceives everything, all being, every meaningful disclosure of reality within the correlation as well as the correlation itself, as radically contingent, as continually structured by the possibility of its not being as it is. What is more, Meillassoux argues, logical coherence prevents us from regarding this contingency itself as a contingent fact: to maintain that the contingency of all things is itself contingent would be self-defeating and lead to an infinite regress (Meillassoux 2006b, 78–81; 2008a, 57–59). If one posits the contingency of all things, the only logically coherent option is to posit this contingency as itself absolutely necessary. Refusing to absolutize the correlation or any other being or region of being leaves the strong correlationist no other consistent option than to absolutize the contingency of all being. This absolutization of the principle of the facticity of correlation into its contingency is the key step of Meillassoux’s argument (Meillassoux 2006b, 70; 2008a, 51). By so doing, the strong 12 correlationist ceases to be a correlationist and becomes a speculative materialist—“speculative” in the sense of accepting absolute theses about the nature of reality based on pure logical necessity, “materialist” in the sense of accepting a notion of being that is not a correlate of thinking. The renunciation of metaphysical, “ontotheological” absolutes thus leads to a new, nonmetaphysical absolute: the principle of the absolute necessity of contingency (Meillassoux 2006b, 71–72; 2008a, 52). This is the fundamental principle of speculative materialism. Meillassoux shows that the principle of contingency entails a principle of “unreason” (irraison), according to which nothing has a necessary reason for being the way it is (Meillassoux 2006b, 82–83; 2008a, 60–61), and a principle of “factuality” (factualité), according to which “to be” necessarily means “to be a fact” (Meillassoux 2006b, 107–8; 2008a, 79–80). This step from strong correlationism to speculative materialism is the “end of finitude” indicated in the title of Meillassoux’s book. Just as Hegel (and, in a different sense, Husserl) was the end of the Kantian “weak” finitude of thinking, Meillassoux presents himself as the end of Heideggerian “strong” finitude. His argument is designed to show that in the end, no attempt to exclude all notions of absoluteness from the realm of thinking can be fully consistent. Finitude can never be the final word: as Hegel puts it, “the finite is the restricted, the perishable, the finite is only the finite, not the imperishable” (Hegel 1985, 117; 2010b, 102). Strong correlationism’s project of deabsolutization paradoxically turns out to be committed to the threefold absolute principle of contingency, unreason, and factuality, and toward the end of the book, it becomes increasingly clear that Meillassoux is constructing nothing less than a new rationalistic system in which all principles are logically deducible from the one absolute principle (Meillassoux 2006b, 91–103; 2008a, 67–76).25 In Meillassoux’s unfinished system of speculative materialism, a central place is held by mathematics as a purely formal mode of thinking nonphenomenal and noncorrelational being. Meillassoux points to the necessity of resuscitating the early modern distinction between primary qualities (such as spatial dimensions and number) and secondary qualities (such as taste or color), for the familiar reason that the former, as opposed to the latter, are measurable and mathematizable and can thus be conceived in a purely formal way, apart from their subjective qualities (Meillassoux 2006b, 13–16; 2008a, 1–3). Meillassoux here reveals the extent of his debt to his mentor Alain Badiou, who famously equates ontology with mathematics, specifically with 25 Meillassoux presumably intends to continue his argument and finalize his system in his forthcoming multivolume work on “divine inexistence” (L’inexistence divine; see Meillassoux 2006b, 67n1; 2008a, 132n15). Translated excerpts from the current manuscript of the work have been published in Harman 2011. Some of the central theses of this work are discussed in Meillassoux 2006a; 2008b. 13 modern set theory (Badiou 1988, 7–39; 2005, 1–30). In spite of their important differences, the two thinkers share a common goal: to undo the post-Kantian hegemony of phenomenological categories of thinking related to experience, meaning, and language and to rehabilitate preKantian rationalism, but without the metaphysical notion of an absolutely necessary entity (Meillassoux 2006b, 16–18; 2008a, 3–5).26 The speculative overcoming of the philosophy of finitude seems for them to promise a way out of the final outcome of the heritage of transcendental idealism, from the contemporary impasse in which the deabsolutization of thinking culminates in its “postmodern” deuniversalization. 5. Conclusion: Meillassoux’s problematic modernity In After Finitude, Meillassoux gives several general philosophical and intellectual reasons for challenging correlationism. His general critical claim is that the true Copernican revolution has taken place in modern science, which has removed the earth and the human being from the focal point of the universe and discovered, with the help of the mathematization of natural science, the “Great Outdoors,” the vast reality to which the existence of humanity is entirely irrelevant (Meillassoux 2006b, 21, 37, 40–41, 70, 86; 2008, 7, 26, 29, 50–51, 63). By contrast, what Kant calls his own “Copernican revolution,” that is, the turn from transcendental realism to transcendental idealism, is in effect a “Ptolemaic counterrevolution” in philosophy that reinstalls human subjectivity at the center of philosophy (Meillassoux 2006b, 162–65; 2008, 117– 19). Post-Kantian philosophy, dominated by Kantian correlationism, thus strayed away from the true calling of modernity, indicated by modern natural science. The extent to which philosophy and science have become alienated from each other is shown by what Meillassoux refers to as the problem of “ancestrality,” which involves references, for example in the fields of astronomy or geology, to periods of time that precede the existence of sentient life (Meillassoux 2006, 13–38; 2008, 1–27). Meillassoux points out that the correlationist, especially the phenomenologist, is unable to accept such “ancestral” statements in a literal sense; for the correlationist, time is ultimately a structure of consciousness or subjectivity, and thus talk about a time before any consciousness existed must be taken as a “metaphorical” extension of the concept of time. Meillassoux’s philosophical project is to “correct” modernity and guide it back to its proper path by asking why, and how, philosophy Badiou provocatively maintains that “[t]he critical machinery he [Kant] set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy. . . . Kant is the inventor of the disastrous theme of our ‘finitude’” (Badiou 2006b, 561; 2009, 535). 26 14 “err[ed] towards transcendental idealism instead of resolutely orienting itself, as it should have, towards a speculative materialism” (Meillassoux 2006b, 168; 2008a, 121)? It should be noted, however, that the main target of Meillassoux’s critique is not correlationism or phenomenology in general, but the “strong” version of correlationism represented, for him, first and foremost by Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Strong correlationism is for Meillassoux the late modern form of the Kantian philosophy of finitude that denies philosophical statements any claim to an absolute validity. The “postmodern” forms of strong correlationism, such as the “weak thought” of Gianni Vattimo, go so far as to deny philosophy even universal, that is, transhistorical and transcultural, validity (Meillassoux 2006b, 58–60; 2008, 42–43). Meillassoux also interestingly accuses the general relativism of strong correlationism of espousing a “fideistic” approach to religion: since philosophical reason has no access to any absolutely valid or necessary truths, it becomes powerless to criticize or challenge religious faith, provided that religion does not make any claims to absolute rational validity either (Meillassoux 2006b, 60–69; 2008, 43–49). This fideistic attitude that requires philosophy to leave religious faith to itself, Meillassoux maintains, prevents philosophy from challenging religious fanaticism. In other words, strong correlationism divests philosophy of its capacity to fulfill the basic mission of the Western Enlightenment: criticizing and debunking dangerous superstition and fanaticism. To what extent we accept the motivation for Meillassoux’s critique of correlationism will thus depend on the extent to which we accept his diagnoses of the contemporary philosophical situation and of the relationship between philosophy and science, on the one hand, and philosophy and religion, on the other. Phenomenologists have not been eager to do so, as there is much questionable in these diagnoses. For example, it is unclear why it would be particularly important to accept all the statements made in various natural sciences in a purely literal sense; there is a widely held instrumentalist approach to science, also prevalent among phenomenologists, according to which scientific statements are to be evaluated in terms of how they advance the aims of their respective scientific discipline, not necessary as straightforward statements about facts. It also remains quite unclear what Meillassoux precisely understands by the contemporary religious fanaticism that philosophy should be equipped to combat, and to what extent the classical Enlightenment thinkers themselves were successful in battling instances of religious fanaticism, which have always been a relatively rare phenomenon.27 27 I discuss Meillassoux’s concept of fanaticism and its problems in Backman 2016. 15 Meillassoux’s purely logical argument is directed exclusively at strong correlationism—he does not attempt to show that, for example, Husserlian transcendental idealism would be a selfcontradicting position. He is simply applying the speculative idealists’ argument against critical philosophy—that any attempt to delimit the scope of knowledge or reason from within is selfdefeating—to the Heideggerian, strong correlationist version of finitude. The entire argument is debatable on several points. Heidegger himself argued, against the Aristotelian tradition, for the primacy of possibility over actuality.28 He would thus not have accepted Meillassoux’s claim that a relationship to mortality as a constitutive possibility necessarily involves an awareness of death and the cessation of the correlation as an actuality, which would presuppose a notion of noncorrelated being. Our awareness of this limit-possibility does not presuppose our awareness of what lies beyond the limit. Meillassoux’s argument against the philosophy of finitude thus lacks, in its current form, sufficient convincing power, and would need decisive complementing. It is to be expected that supplements to this argument are meant to be provided in Meillassoux’s announced but still unpublished major work, Divine Inexistence, to which After Finitude is only a prelude (Meillassoux 2006b, 67n1; 2008, 132n15). 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