The Possibility of a Flat Ethics

​So I've been a little absent here, and for that I apologize. However, I've been pretty busy. At the end of May I presented a paper at the Rhetoric Society of America conference in Philadelphia over Object-Oriented Identification (I finally finished the point brought up by my last couple of posts...I might post my paper here soon). I was on a panel with Jim Brown Jr. and Scot Barnett, and during the Q and A session following our presentations we were asked about the possibility of an Object-Oriented ethics. I've been able to give it some thought and what follows is a rough sketch of an idea that occurred to me after the conference.

To answer the question of whether or not there can be a nonhuman or non-anthropomorphic ethics, it is important to first understand the most fundamental axiom of object-oriented ontology—that objects withdraw from all relations—for its withdrawal is also its excess. In other words, the withdrawn object is a volcanic soup of potential, waiting to be actualized. And, second, like object-oriented ontology itself, any attempt at developing an object-oriented ethics must also follow the logic of the uncanny. In this way, an object-oriented or flat ethics requires an adherence to contingency, so that what was or is could very well not be, and that was is not, could very well exist. As was stated earlier, the logic of the uncanny forces binaries to overlap, to seemingly bleed into each other without requiring the other to disappear completely. In other words, the uncanny allows there to be both appearance and withdrawal simultaneously and an interior that is also exterior.

Here, Meillassoux’s insistence on the necessity of contingency in After Finitude might be of some help. For Meillassoux, unlike the object-oriented folks, the way around correlationist thought is to “uncover an absolute necessity that does not reinstate any form of absolutely necessary entity” (34). Unlike object-oriented ontology, which insists on the necessity of the object, Meillassoux finds his necessity in contingency itself—a non-metaphysical necessity. Contingency “expresses the fact that physical laws remain indifferent as to whether an event occurs or not – they allow an entity to emerge, to subsists, or to perish” (39). In other words, by absolutizing contingency over any specific entity, Meillassoux places contradiction at the heart of being itself. Being itself becomes contingent, meaning there could just as well be something as well as there could not. But, then why is there something rather than nothing if both are possible?

For Meillassoux, contingency also requires that something exist—that there be something rather than nothing. His argument for this something, again, revolves around the necessity of contingency: Since contingency is thinkable (as an absolute), but unthinkable without the persistence of the two realms of existence and inexistence, we have to say that it is necessary that there always be this or that existent capable of not existing, and this or that inexistent capable of existing. ​ Thus the solution to the problem [of contingency] is as follows: it is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else. The necessity of the contingency of the entity imposes the necessary existence of the contingent entity. (emphasis in original; 76).

For Meillassoux, then, the necessity of contingency requires that there actually be something that is contingent. In order for there to be this logic of existence/nonexistence that contingency is based on, a logic that is itself uncanny, there must be something that follows such logic. Object-oriented ontology, therefore, is justified in claiming that all entities are objects but only if they abide by some sort of uncanny logic that is guided by absolute contingency. Again, what makes this possible in object-oriented ontology is the withdrawn nature of every object. As Bryant argues, “Insofar as virtual proper being is thoroughly withdrawn and never itself becomes present, it can only be inferred through the actual. It is only through tracking local manifestations and their variations that we get any sense of the dark volcanic powers harbored within objects” (281). What withdraws from all objects is precisely this absolute contingency, this uncanny volcano of potential. But what does this have to do with the ethics of such objects?

​It is only because of the necessity of the contingent and the adherence to an uncanny logic, that an object-oriented ethics can exist. Simplified, ethics require that a choice be possible and depending upon how one responds to that choice, one’s actions are deemed either ethical or unethical. Typically, these decisions are based on some sort of law (social, moral, personal, etc.). So for example, if I were faced with the choice of whether or not to save a baby from a hungry shark, my choice to save the baby at the expense of the hunger of the shark would depend upon my acceptance of some moral law(s) or social law(s). If I go against some moral or social law, I might find myself attempting to explain my unethical behavior. The problem is that such laws change over time and in between social circles, so that what might be ethical today may not have been 50 or so years ago, or what might be ethical in the United States may not be ethical in India. In this way, there is already a certain amount of contingency in human ethics.

​Most material nonhuman objects, on the other hand, do not abide by any set of moral or social laws. Instead, most are guided by physical laws. These physical laws can guide form, structure, function, and collectivity. Two hydrogen atoms seem to only bond with an oxygen molecule in a very specific way. But as Meillassoux argues, even these laws are subject to contingency, meaning “that the laws of nature could change, not in accordance with some superior hidden law…but for no cause or reason whatsoever” (83). Because of the necessity of contingency that Meillassoux argues for, physical laws (like objects) must be seen as operating in a contingent space between being one way or another. So if objects are contingent and laws are contingent, why are things not simply constantly in flux? Why is there a seeming static nature to the world?

​ The answer is rather simple, but one that seems to run throughout object-oriented thinking: because of contingency, there is always the possibility that physical laws become something other than what they are. Or, as Meillassoux puts it, requiring the necessity of contingency means not ruling out “the possibility that contingent laws might only very rarely change—so rarely indeed that no one would ever have had the opportunity to witness such a modification” (106). Again, the emphasis is on potential and contingency. Yet this contingency implies fidelity of the object to the physical law and fidelity of the law to the object. Objects act ethically to one another insofar as they stay faithful to the physical law. But since the physical law itself has the potential to be other at any time, it too has a certain fidelity to its relation with the object. In other words, a flat ethics proposes that all objects are contingent, and that any laws by which they might abide, must be understood as contingent, as well.

Rats + Hegel = Surrealism

Since the title of this post starts with “rats” I feel the need to do so as well. If we were to look at a rat's behavior, we might consider it to be random, or contingent – in that the rat's movements do not follow a logical pattern from A to B to C. Now, if we were wanting to catch this rat, we wouldn't just simply run around after the rat, for any attempt to do so would prove futile. Instead, we more than likely would set out a trap for the rat. But what is this trap? What does it do? And how is such a trap better at catching a rat than we might be?

To begin to answer these questions, let's take a look at what the trap is. Like most traps it works on some level of availability; an open or “armed” state and a closed or “sprung” state. In the open state the trap is waiting for the rat to step into it. In the closed state, the trap has caught the rat. In effect, the trap acts as a forced binary solution to the problem of the rat's contingent behavior – either the trap is open or closed. We no longer need to guess where the rat might move, counter our movements, or avoid moving by hiding. Instead, the trap structures the situation to the point that we are not even needed. The trap takes away the randomness of the rat's movements by forcing upon it a binary structure.

Reality, the world, and all objects, then, are just as random (or in Meillassoux's terms, contingent) as the behavior of the rat. In fact we can reformulate this contingency, this being and not-being, into what others have termed Hegel's Dialectic. For Hegel thought is broken up into three parts: being, nothing or (not-being), and becoming. In any encounter we are confronted with an object's being, its existence, or in Hegel's terms “pure being.” Now, along with this beginning is this thesis's opposite or antithesis. Therefore we must also posit the objects not-being or nothingness. For Meillassoux this duality causes a problem:

To claim that an existent cannot exist, and to claim moreover that this possibility is an ontological necessity, is also to claim that the sheer existence of the existent, just like the sheer inexistence of the inexistent are two imperishable poles which allow the perhisability of everything to be thought. Consequently, I can no more conceive of the contingency of negative facts alone than I can conceive of the non-being of existence as such. Since contingency is thinkable (as an absolute), but unthinkable without the persistence of the two realms of existence and inexistence, we have to say that it is necessary that there always be this or that existent capable of not existing, and this or that inexistent capable of existing. (76).

What Meillassoux works up to, then, is a synthesis of Hegel's two poles – a synthesis of being (thesis) and nothing or not-being (antithesis). For Hegel this synthesis is called becoming. For Meillassoux, “the solution to the problem is as follows: it is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else” (76). In other words, it is necessary that everything that exists be seen in its contingency as possibly not existing and vice versa. Every object is always becoming, a becoming of its antithesis by way of contingency, and I would add, our un-canny.

Again, we can understand how reality, like our rat's behavior, is in constant need of a third option, a synthesis of the contingency of reality. Therefore, we are constantly throwing out traps, laying down binaries, or creating meaning in order to unburden ourselves of this ontological loop of being and not-being. By saying there is a meaning to an encounter we are, in essence, creating a way to “deal” with the object we are encountering. Or, to put this in terms of our object: every encounter or event (B) is both an encounter with the known and unknown (thus our terms, un-canny and contingency). However, each encounter also produces an event (E) as a result. And every event (E), also called a meaning or a consequence, is our encounter with the object “as” something, so that the object becomes something other than its being/not-being. It becomes meaningful.

And this is where I feel surrealism as a philosophical movement might be of some use. Surrealism works upon the basic notion of juxtaposition to create meaning. For example, the painting entitled “The Son of Man” by Rene Magritte depicts a man, dressed in a suit and a red tie; however, right in front of his face is a green apple, so that as Magritte put it in a radio interview:

At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

By juxtaposing the apple in front of the man's face – an object we are used to looking at due to the large number of portraits and self-portraits – we find the two images conflicting between the known (apple) and the unknown (the man's face), or between the thesis (the man's face) and its antithesis (the apple). Stuck with this “conflict,” as Magritte puts it, we attempt to create a meaning between the two – our brains try to make a connection between what is there and not there. In other words, we try and synthesize a solution so that the contingency of the painting is no longer a problem. So we might say something along the lines of “the apple represents death, or sin of the human race” – to disburden us from the un-canniness of the apple in front of the man's face. I'm not trying to say that such a synthesis erases or does away with the contingency or un-canniness of the painting. Nor am I attempting to say that such an utterance carries on this contingency by just hiding it somewhere else within it. No, instead what becoming does is push forward, it moves past the contention between being and not-being but not in a transcendental way. For the utterance can never fully capture the encounter. Nor is the utterance merely a vocal or audible statement, for these two formulations imply a listener, something not needed for an utterance to be made. The utterance, then, is merely the manufacturing of meaning/consequences based upon the contingency of the object – something I feel only surrealism can attempt to show.

So in our terms, by juxtaposing the realm of the known with the realm of the unknown, every encounter (B) with an object creates an utterance which carries with it a meaning/consequence. This utterance or event (E) can never grasp the object completly but instead is always reliant upon the encounter (B). Meaning is created as a result of this utterance or attempt to synthesize the two realms, and this meaning propels the object outside of this initial interaction. In this way our un-canny ontology is best considered under surrealistic terms of juxtaposition and the Hegelian dialectic – where when two objects encounter each other, each is forced to create an utterance which has meaning beyond the encounter.

For example, when a large hailstone falls on a car window, both the window and the hailstone are confronted with the other's contingent existence – both of being and not-being – since each existed independent from each other before the encounter but are now forced to deal with the other's presence. However, each object simply doesn't stay within this moment of interaction, so that something happens – simply stating, here, that there is an encounter. And although we may not know or understand the utterance that took place (remember an utterance in our terms means a system – of words, fields, experiences, etc. – for no object, like words, are ever encountered by themselves), the utterance is visible through the consequences of the encounter. Therefore the consequences of the encounter are obvious to us – the window is cracked or shattered, and/or the hailstone is chipped or broken. The contingency of each object – its being/not-being – is dealt with physically, through everlasting consequences upon each object, for both the window and the hailstone will never be the same.

Encounters and Uncanny Elements

In a recent (and strikingly poetic) post, Larval Subjects describes the wonder at finding a spot of mud that has been dried and cracked as a result of the heat of the sun. He remarks, “The idea, then, would be that substances reveal themselves, disclose themselves, in their interactions with one another. One substance draws something out from another substance, a new quality, a new arrangement, new properties.”

So, I want to discuss the second part of my object-cone by describing just this, the way objects reveal themselves. In a way, this is building upon our discussion of the thing itself, but more importantly we may now bring in a discussion on how objects interact with other objects, how subjects interact with objects, and how subjects interact with other subjects. Let’s first look at a new diagram:

As you can see, our original diagram has been left unchanged, but now we’ve added three new aspects, each of which will be discussed in what follows – they are, B (an event that relates directly to the thing itself or A), C (an element that passes from one realm to the other, in this case from the unknown realm to the known), and E (an event that does not relate to A).

When any thing interacts with any other thing we have a sort of meeting not just of substances but of entities with individual existences or being. As such these types of meetings are not simply a bumping of substances, nor are they merely a passing of information. Instead, when we encounter another object, as well as when other objects encounter us (and each other) there exists a type of exchange, much like a dialogue. By dialogue, I wish only to describe this type of meeting as a back and forth of availabilities. In other words, when I encounter say a rubber ball, I immediately encounter the ball’s texture, color, weight, circumference, etc. And, the ball encounters me in just as immediate of a way, through the pressure I exert on it, the oils in my skin, etc. Each encounter (B) is a sharing that takes place regardless of whether or not the other object is aware of it, much like Larval’s encounter with the dry mud. But, it is important to note that each encounter (B) always takes place in the realm of the known. We experience things (and things experience us) in certain ways, ways in which we can grasp understandingly. Therefore, I can know the color of the ball, it is familiar to me if I come upon it again, just like I can anticipate the weight of it since I have previously held it. The dialogue between objects, since it happens in the realm of the known, allows each object to perceive, apprehend, and even anticipate the other object.

Yet, with each encounter (B) there is also a slight encounter with an element from the unknown realm – element (C). In other words, each B is contains a C. But, what is this mysterious element? Well, the answer is quite simply, complex. It is a moment of un-canniness and contingency. Since the element (C) originates in the realm of the unknown and passes into the known realm, the only way it can do so is by way of the thing itself (A). By passing through (A), the element (C) takes on, or is changed by the thing itself in such a way that this change, this difference, is also experienced alongside the object in an encounter (B). However, this element (C) is never experienced outright, or by purpose. Instead it shows itself by accident, through a misunderstanding on the part of the object encountering it. So, for example, when Larval picks up the dry mud shapes and wishes to put them together as if they were puzzle pieces, he anticipates them being like other “solid” shapes he has encountered before – a simple misunderstanding – but when the mud shapes break, Larval instead encounters the element (C) of the unknown realm. In a sense, he realizes that the shape is something else – other – that it was hiding a part of itself (an unknown, unfamiliar, or uncanny) part that would never have shown itself if he hadn’t interacted with it. The mud is never there, present-at-hand or for-Larval, but instead is itself, simply unbeknownst to him. We, as other objects, encounter the mud always in the realm of the known. Mud behaves, then, as we expect it to behave until it does not. When the mud breaks, we get a glimpse at the possibility of the mud’s non-existence, or of its contingency and un-canniness. We understand that the mud could very well just as not be there (Un-Dasein) as well as be there (Dasein).

As for the last point on our diagram, (E) or the event that does not relate to A, all that needs to be said of it, at this point, is that this event takes into account the fact that there are other entities that play into the scenario of this object’s being or existence that do not directly come into contact with the object. An example of such an event could be seen as the writing of this post, which although a writing about the mud experienced by Larval Subjects, it has no direct encounter with the object in discussion - i.e. the mud. Event (E) as it exists in the diagram, then, is a concept of the object - in this case, my concept of the mud described by Larval Subjects. I can discuss the mud, describe the mud, and talk theoretically about the mud; however, since I had no direct encounter with the mud, these events never reach the point that (B) does - that is a point where element (C) appears.

Yet, I wish to make another point clear (a point that needs further clarification in another post) event (E) is an integral part to the object even though it may seem outside of the object proper, simply because of the aforementioned duty it holds – that it is through the event (E) that the object comes to exist as something other than material object. This is why, if drawn elsewhere event (E) should always be drawn as if it were just outside the known realm.

Hopefully, now that our object is completely drawn, we can begin to explore its eccentricities as they come into light.

Contingency and the Un-canny

In After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, Quentin Meillassoux argues against the predominant philosophical view of correlationism. For Meillassoux, the correlationist claims that there is no access to the in-itself of an object but only of the for-us. In other words, for the correlationist, we can understand the hammer as a hammer for-us (what it does, how it looks, its weight, height, and color, etc.) but we can never know the hammer in-itself, or what makes the hammer a hammer – i.e., its hammer-ness.

However, Meillassoux contends that in order to counter this perspective, we must demonstrate “that the capacity-to-be-other of everything is the absolute presupposed by the [correlationist] circle itself, then we will have succeeded in demonstrating that one cannot de-absolutize contingency without incurring the self-destruction of the circle – which is another way of saying that contingency will turn out to have been immunized against the operation whereby correlationism relativizes the in-itself to the for-us” (54-5). By this, Meillassoux is calling for a form of thinking that relies heavily upon the contingency of the object – put simply, whatever is could not be, and whatever is not could be. This type of contingency, which Meillassoux names facticity, is both thinkable (as in I can think about my own death) and unthinkable (but I am not dead, so I don’t know death). Contingency can thus be a way of talking about the known and unknown existing at the same time and in one thought. For, as Meillassoux points out, this contingency is the only absolute – the only thing not contingent.

Therefore, we can understand how close the two terms, contingent and un-canny come. For on the one hand the contingent is that which allows us to think a thing’s existence and non-existence at the same time. And on the other hand we have the un-canny as that which allows us to think the knowable and unknowable at the same time. Perhaps, then the difference is one of ontology and epistemology. For, now, given both, we can talk about the being of things as well as how we know things. Perhaps, now, with both terms we can ask the question that Heidegger asked, “What is a Thing?” but perhaps now, we can understand both what a thing is and how we know it as such - the thing itself.