Published April 23, 2026 | Version v1
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A Pathetic Argument Against Meillassoux

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla

Description

This essay criticizes Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative realism by focusing on the implications of hyper-Chaos for the concept of nature. It argues that if natural laws can change at any moment, then nature loses its historical continuity, existential meaning, and practical significance. Against this view, the text proposes a “pathetic” counterargument: human life, struggle, beauty, and political commitment all presuppose a world with temporal depth and relative regularity. Nature matters because it is historical, affective, and constitutive of embodied life rather than a merely contingent field of dead matter. 

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References

  • Ducarme, F., & Couvet, D. (2020). What does "nature" mean? Palgrave Communications, 6(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0390-y
  • Johnston, A. (2011). Hume's Revenge: À Dieu, Meillassoux. In The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Re.press. https://philpapers.org/rec/BRYTST
  • Meillassoux, Q. (2016). Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition: A Speculative Analysis of the Meaningless Sign. In Genealogies of Speculation: Materialism and Subjectivity since structuralism. Bloomsbury Academic. https://philpapers.org/rec/MEIIRR
  • Meillassoux, Q. (2017). After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Bloomsbury.