Quentin Meillassoux's "After Finitude" Chapter One

Meillassoux provides a unique history of philosophy, splitting philosophers into two grops: pre-Kantians (who believe in objects themselves) and post-Kantians (who believe in the relations between subjects and objects). Meillassoux calls these later philosophers "correlationists" because correlation takes primacy over the thing itself or the subject as Being. He considers consciousness and language (and the phenomenologists and linguistic post-structuralists who seem to oppose them) examples of correlational thinking.

Meillassoux begins by pointing to the concept of "ancestrality," which is essentially the idea that scientists can offer true statements about objects that exist before humans were around to perceive them. "Ancestral" facts include the accretion of the earth 4.56 billion years ago. The fact of the earth's accretion is difficult to fit into correlationist thinking because they see the link between man's consciousness and the object of which it is conscious as primary to any object or self as such (that is, "in itself").

I don't know where Meillassoux takes his argument from here (I hope to write more as I make more progress through the book). But it seems promising for my work on the modernist poets. First, and most obviously, Meillassoux's perspective seems to hint at some sort of pre-existing absolute. This might have interesting implications compared to the thought of English philosopher F. H. Bradley, who went on and on about the Absolute -- and about whom T. S. Eliot wrote his doctoral dissertation. Second, the Imagist emphasis on "direct treatment of the thing" seems problematic from the perspective of "correlationists," who represent the mainstream of twentieth century philosophical thought (as described by Meillassoux). But it also seems problematic from a Bradleian perspective; after all, how does one directly treat the thing if it cannot be distinguished from other things because they're all part of the Absolute?

Clearly, the Absolute is too quaint an idea for Meillassoux to return to, so it will be interesting to see where his argument leads. But I will be reading with an eye toward Eliot's interpretation of Bradley's metaphysics. Eliot's obvious interest in the human search for unity may be illuminated by these other thinkers, both before and after him.