Exploring the Empty Sign: Meillassoux’s Speculative Materialism and Wittgenstein's Tractatus
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | While defending his speculative materialism, Quentin Meillassoux has accused many thinkers of a “correlationism” in which the cognizing subject is incapable of reaching the reality that is indifferent to human thought. He cites Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology as prime examples of strong correlationism. In this article, I argue that Meillassoux’s speculative materialism closely resembles Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. I argue that Wittgenstein's account of names and objects is very close to Meillassoux’s theory of the empty sign, devoid of meaning and capable of identical iteration. This, he claims, is the distinguishing feature of mathematical discourse, which is capable of accessing mind-independent reality. If this is so, then either some correlations are capable of accessing this reality or, more importantly, the notion of correlation needs to be specified more precisely. At the same time, I will argue that Meillassoux’s derivation of the empty sign can be seen as complementary to the Tractatus, since Meillassoux argues that a sign is thinkable without any meaning. In the final part of the paper, I will evaluate Meillassoux’s argument for the facticity of every correlation, and argue that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, under certain interpretations, can escape this criticism. |
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