Quentin Meillassoux on Contingency and the Absolute

The following is a translated talk delivered by Quentin Meillassoux at the Sorbonne. The talk was translated by Benjamin Lozano and brought to my attention by the folks at Speculative Heresy.

Contingency & the Absolutization of the One
By Quentin Meillassoux

The theme of my talk concerns the question of a possible reactivation of the concept of the absolute. The version of the absolute that I wish to develop here is theoretical and speculative, yet distinct from the way in which it‟s traditionally understood. And the need for such an undertaking is motivated less by general concerns over the value of the speculative approach than by a more precise problem, the framing of which is not often thought of as particularly problematic, but whose importance today seems to me to have been rather underestimated. This problem constitutes what we might call a paradox. I call it (for reasons that I will explain in a minute) the paradox of ancestrality.

So the objectives of my discussion are twofold: First, I want to provide an account of this paradox; secondly, I‟m going to outline a potential response to it therein. And as we‟ll see, this response requires that we first pass through our contemporary thinking on the absolute, followed by an examination of the concept of unity –which I understand not as the unity of the thing, but as the unity of the sign. All of these points will become clear throughout the course of the exposition.

Read the Entire Talk @ Speculative Heresy

And here is a morsel from page 13 - which, upon chewing, makes me desire the sanctuary of empirical science:

Hyperchaos simply denotes that everything either could or could not change without reason; it could remain in perpetual flux or could remain in the same state for an indefinite duration (as it appears to be the case, for instance, with the “universal” laws of physics). In fact, it‟s entirely conceivable that hyperchaos might just as well result in a world wholly comprised of fixed objects, without any becoming whatsoever. Hyperchaos denotes a Time whereby everything could be abolished just as readily as everything could persist in an eternal becoming. From the vantage of hyperchaos, everything is contingent –even disorder and becoming themselves.

I have a very difficult time following Meillassoux's discourse. I think he has a lot of innovative things to say, but these tend to get lost, for me, in his more obtuse theoretic reasonings.