Harman says that Latour's irreductionism resembles Heidegger's critique of onto-theology: the reduction of Being to a being. He then says, "Latour decided to do the experiment of not reducing anything, taking all the actors on their own terms…". Which is to reduce Being to actors. Harman goes on: “actors of course means anything at all, anything that acts, anything that has an effect on other things”. This excludes Being qua physis, which is "self-bringing forth", not acting on "other" things.
Da-sein isn’t a human per se but a mode of being. One could imagine an entity that is functionally and biologically identical to a human being but lacks the essential characteristics of Da-sein.
Harman is on the right lines inasmuch as we still need to bring together phenomenology and structuralism (or network theory or systems theory). But he’d be much better off looking at Edgar Morin, who, like Heidegger, goes back to the pre-Socratics and interprets Being as physis, even if he does so from inside the tradition of systems theory, not phenomenology. But if Being is physis, then Latour is completely oblivious of Being, which is why I'm skeptical of Harman's paper, interesting as it is.
An object is existence without being and the horror of existence is what an object is and existence without being is all around us for we live in a world of objects that exist-there without being-there and to our absolute horror there are even humans there that exist without being existing-there-without-being-there for existing-there is not being-there: Ontology for Heidegger is Obology just as Ontology for Harman is Obology and Obology for Heidegger and Harman is objectified-being-into-obing.
More Graham Harman talks, please!
I will preceed to upload more.
I have managed to track down more than 3 Harman lectures.
Harman says that Latour's irreductionism resembles Heidegger's critique of onto-theology: the reduction of Being to a being. He then says, "Latour decided to do the experiment of not reducing anything, taking all the actors on their own terms…". Which is to reduce Being to actors. Harman goes on: “actors of course means anything at all, anything that acts, anything that has an effect on other things”. This excludes Being qua physis, which is "self-bringing forth", not acting on "other" things.
Thanks!
Da-sein isn’t a human per se but a mode of being. One could imagine an entity that is functionally and biologically identical to a human being but lacks the essential characteristics of Da-sein.
Harman is on the right lines inasmuch as we still need to bring together phenomenology and structuralism (or network theory or systems theory). But he’d be much better off looking at Edgar Morin, who, like Heidegger, goes back to the pre-Socratics and interprets Being as physis, even if he does so from inside the tradition of systems theory, not phenomenology. But if Being is physis, then Latour is completely oblivious of Being, which is why I'm skeptical of Harman's paper, interesting as it is.
An object is existence without being and the horror of existence is what an object is and existence without being is all around us for we live in a world of objects that exist-there without being-there and to our absolute horror there are even humans there that exist without being existing-there-without-being-there for existing-there is not being-there: Ontology for Heidegger is Obology just as Ontology for Harman is Obology and Obology for Heidegger and Harman is objectified-being-into-obing.