Reading hardcore "philosophical" books can be a bit of a challenge. They do not read like a novel or anything like that, rather you have to be focused and concentrated on formulations, meanings, terms and so on. Both directly as a way to understand what the author is trying to say, but also the underlying meanings that may or may not be there. Add to that the ever present risk of an underlying agenda, that may try to focus you on certain aspects and steer you away from other. In the end, it is not the easiest thing to get some coherent "experience" out of reading these kinds of books.
On the other hand, I really appreciate people who actually try, for better or worse, to get ahead in philosophy. It is not the easiest thing to do and mostly pretty much unwanted, unless you are in those specific academic circles who feed on talking about and writing books on philosophical aspects. But it usually stay within these circles for the same reasons.
Metaphysics is the attempt to describe the structure and the limitations of what consciousness "describes" which is essentiel to go into epistemology. Armen Avanessian has written a book about this topic and angles it as a sort of "appeal" to "future" metaphysics.
Overall my impression was rather .. meeh. My problem is that he does not really define anything and he tends to use a high lix number academic language that leaves you exhausted after reading a few pages and also makes it hard for you to stay engaged with the topics. If I should emphasize some positive aspects it would be that he does not seem to be having a strong agenda. He can easily talk about the different "trenches" in the philosophical "war". He does draw from a lot of different sources and inspirations to make an attempt at a mainstream attempt at talking metaphysics.
The field of metaphysics, imho, needs a fresh start and preferably from "independant" non-scholarly, non-academic individuals.
Ok, so let us head into it. I will draw out specific sentences to give you an idea of what this book attempts, and even if they are small tidbits - they should give a small insight at least.
In the chapter: "Introduction : Metaphysics" :
"A fundamental difficulty in defining metaphysics certainly lies in the fact that there is no prevailing consensus as to its object. Does it even have an object, in the way that biology explores life or economics the field of economy?"
"Metaphysics is a questioning in which we inquire into beings as a whole, and inquire in such a way that in so doing we ourselves, the questioners, are thereby included in the question, placed into question"
(gotta love the convoluted argument there. I guess he is trying to say that metaphysics always deals with everything, and that means YOU are included :-)
"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise." (citation of Wittgenstein in his "Tractatus" ... this is epistemology, not metaphysics)
"The speculative philosopher and mathematician Alfred N Whitehead came to an even more radical conclusion: "People make the mistake of talking about "natural laws". There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature""
(I particularly like that one. I agree, as an extension of the claim of Wittgenstein)
In the chapter "Substance/accident" :
"... catastrophe is not believable: it is held to be possible only once it has occurred, and by that point it is too late. This obstacle can be overcome, I believe, only if an utterly new metaphysical conception is adopted off our relationship to time" (citation of Dupuy).
I am not sure how to interpret this. I see the future as unknowable and no matter how hard anyone tries - whenever that future becomes the now, it will likely be wanted to be different in some way or another. Call it catastrophe or not, depends on what you think ought to be instead of what is. (good old Hume peaks out again :)
"We moreover, live in a culture that essentially seeks to defend against the incursion of the unexpected, To this end, we have not only laws to be followed under threat of punishment, but even distinct cognitive categories of necessity and legality"
Cognitive categories of necessity and legality? I don´t understand how that can be cognitive. >Thast is the whole problem of the idea of a state, that it does not exist and is non-cognitive. Threatening people with murder or writing "laws" on pieces of paper do not make them so.
"The leftist theorist Franco Berardi understands depression as " condition close to the truth because it is the moment in which we grasp the non-existence of meaning"
"The ideology of immateriality or dematerialization is armchair philosophy in the service of those who currently rule. Here, as everywhere else, there is a connection between what is metaphysically wrong and what is politically wrong. bad metaphysics always serves bad politics"
This is a strong sentence. I tend to agree, since I also believe metaphysics to be the foundation of philosophy. But I would add though, that it is the quick jump into armchair epistemology that really is the killing factor. People who think they know but dont, but are unaware are the most dangerous ones.
These are some quotes from the earliest chapters in the book. In a later chapter called "Truth", i would like to make a long citation as I find it incredibly hard to understand, while I at the same time, believe that truth has nothing to do with metaphysics, but is a cornerstone of epistemology.
"Alternative thinking - We are accustomed to equating thought and reflection, as though there were no alternative to our culturally injected reflexive thinking. Such reflexive and thus mirror-like thought constantly strives - whether implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously - to locate itself in the present of its object (and objective) counterpart. In truth, this process naturally always plays out retroactively, as a re-action.
Thinking the new, by contrast, always follows a recursive pattern. In recursive processes in which parts combine together to form new wholes, both integrating whole and integrated parts are changed, and this changing of the object of knowledge - which does not exist prior to, nor does it proceed in sync with cognition - necessarily also induces a transformation of the discerning (or researching, artistic) subject. This applies as well to thought about or from the future that is conscious of this new recursivity and seeks to exploit or even enhance it. We are dealing here with a form of speculative thought, less reflective than recursive, that is constantly assembling new elements and parts into a different whole. In place of the respective object of external and re-flexive thought, this requires - not least for political reasons - involved, participatory, recursive thinking"
Ho-ly-sh%€. What is he saying here? I simply am unable to understand anything of it. If this is an introduction by a "scholar" about truth (within a book about metaphysics), then it is no wonder, that nothing seems to grow in this field. It is unbelievable to me that you can write such incredibly convoluted and practically uninterpretable nonsense about such a central subject as "truth". You may also note, that he uses the word "truth" (bold text above), within a description of what truth is!! A bad case of "circular reasoning.
I will let that stand as a "testement" to the state of present, academic philosophy.