Daigle, Christine

Morin, Marie-Ève

University of Queensland eSpace

PhænEx 12, no. 2 (winter 2018): i-vi 
© 2018 Christine Daigle and Marie-Eve Morin 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Editorial Introduction 
CHRISTINE DAIGLE 
MARIE-EVE MORIN 
 
The relatively new movements in contemporary Continental philosophy 
that fall under the labels of speculative realism (SR) and object-oriented 
ontology (OOO) pose a serious challenge to phenomenology. By placing 
phenomenology under the heading of correlationism, proponents of these 
movements attempt to move away from epistemological questions of 
access, and to renew interest in metaphysical inquiry. According to these 
new realists, phenomenology would, by definition, only be able to study 
things as they are experienced by us, that is, things insofar as they are 
correlate of our own experience, and would be unable to speak of things as 
they are in themselves. According to SR and OOO, this reduction of things 
to things-for-us leads to disastrous consequences not only philosophically 
but also for the world we inhabit. Indeed, this reduction takes the form of 
human exceptionalism—things are only worthy of attention insofar as they 
are related to human concerns since we, human beings, are the measure of 
all things—which in its turn prepares the ground for technological 
exploitation, the exploitation of non-humans, and environmental crisis to 
emerge.  
 The impetus behind this special issue of PhaenEx is to create a space 
for phenomenologically-minded philosophers to engage with the new realist 
philosophies. It is fair to say that the dialogue between phenomenology and 
the new realisms has so far been unproductive at best, and deaf at worst. 
That exchange of ideas between proponents of each philosophical position 
is difficult is evidenced, for example, by the publication of Dan Zahavi’s 
article “The End of What? Phenomenology vs. Speculative Realism”1 and 
some of the reactions it has given rise to. The title of Zahavi’s piece was a 
play on Tom Sparrow’s book The End of Phenomenology, in which he 
argued that phenomenology has become so diffused it may lack a clear telos 
and is made irrelevant. Speculative realism, on the other hand, “mines and 
adapts the resources of phenomenology, [and] has taken up 
phenomenology’s call to get us back to reality, but without distracting us 
from the demand for metaphysical accountability.” 2  Sparrow finds that 
                                                 
1 See Dan Zahavi’s “The end of what? Phenomenology and Speculative Realism.” 
2 Sparrow, 12. 
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phenomenology offers a timid realism that lacks credibility and is 
problematic. To him, speculative realism is simply better equipped to 
respond to the challenge of realism. Zahavi, by contrast, argues that recent 
criticisms of phenomenology, such as Sparrow’s, are either superficial and 
simplistic—they do not engage the texts and hence miss key differences 
internal to phenomenology—or they lack novelty—these criticisms are 
already found within the phenomenological movement or have been raised 
by analytic philosophers and empirical scientists since the inception of 
phenomenology.  
 Indeed, Zahavi reminds us that if one is attacking phenomenology 
from a scientific or metaphysical realist perspective, one is merely 
rehearsing analytic philosophy’s critique of phenomenology. On the other 
hand, phenomenology also has a long tradition of critique of scientific and 
metaphysical realism. Reversing Sparrow’s conclusion, Zahavi claims that 
if we are looking for an affirmation of the reality of everyday objects (of the 
natural world), speculative realism “fails miserably.” He further claims that 
phenomenology is methodologically better equipped to account for the real 
world in its familiarity as well as its strangeness. Addressing Zahavi’s 
article, Sparrow affirms that Zahavi is wrong to see phenomenology as a 
“pure adversary” of SR, at least in the form it takes in Harman’s and his 
own work. Speculative realism would be a “loosely associated series of 
attempts to draw out the limits of phenomenology.”3 At the same time, 
Sparrow seems to imply that Zahavi’s criticism of speculative realism has 
missed the mark because it has not engaged directly with the arguments 
developed to support their varied metaphysical positions. Zahavi’s position 
appears as a reactionary defence of orthodox phenomenology against the 
creative appropriation (some would say distortion) of phenomenology in 
Harman and Sparrow. In this vein, Harman sees in Zahavi “the 
phenomenology gatekeeper of [his] generation.”4 
 In June 2016 we hosted a day-long panel at the EPTC conference to 
tackle these questions and invited our contributors to offer responses to 
speculative realism and its critique of phenomenology. The title of the panel 
was “Back to Phenomenology Itself?” The question mark in the title is of 
note. What was in question for us was the relevance of phenomenology for 
our philosophical inquiries and contemporary problems. We therefore asked 
the speakers to explore the resources found within phenomenology, 
including feminist and realist phenomenology, to take up the challenge 
posed by SR and OOO and contribute to the renewed focus on matter and 
objects. We wanted to initiate a dialogue between speculative realism and 
object-oriented ontology and thinkers in the phenomenological tradition 
broadly construed, but we did not want to presume how this dialogue was 
                                                 
3 “Interview with Tom Sparrow.” 
4 DeLanda and Harman, 1. 
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Christine Daigle and Marie-Eve Morin 
 
 
going to take place or even if it was possible at all in the first place. Should 
phenomenologists, for example, point to the letter of Husserl’s or 
Heidegger’s texts and attempt to dispel any misunderstandings? In a sense, 
it is fairly easy to show that this or that thinker did not get this or that 
concept in Husserl or Heidegger right. But the new realists can as easily 
reply that it is not what matters. What matters is how humans think and 
engage with the non-human world. As such, the new realists are not so much 
trying to get the philosophers of the past right. Rather, they are attempting 
to shock us out of our anthropocentric ways of thinking for the sake of a 
more equal or more just future world. The debate is about which method 
allows us to get back “to the things themselves.” It is about whether we 
should go back to phenomenology, and phenomenology “itself”, in its 
traditional form, or whether we should abandon phenomenology once and 
for all in favour of SR or OOO, or whether it is not rather necessary to 
transform phenomenology from within. 
 Another possible avenue for the dialogue would be for 
phenomenologists to read the new realists’ texts carefully and engage with 
their arguments on their own terms. This seems to be what Sparrow finds 
missing in Zahavi’s article. But is this possible? In some way, the basic 
assumptions behind both philosophical movements are so far apart that it 
seems impossible to gain enough common ground to even start arguing 
about specific claims. But in this case, should we not rather give up on 
engaging with the new realist thinkers altogether? Is there still some value 
in reading their works and taking on the challenge they pose to 
phenomenology? Does all this talk of correlationism and ancestral 
statements for example not result in a distortion of phenomenology? Or does 
it allow us to reframe phenomenology in a productive way, highlighting 
some of its strengths that might have gone unnoticed or forgotten?  
 At the same time, the encounter between phenomenology and 
speculative realism might allow us to point out the limit of the 
phenomenological method—whether we want to accept this limit or 
overcome it. One suggestion made by Anna Mudde at the panel, is that the 
real shortcoming of phenomenology, when the time comes to think non-
human objects, is the genuine incapacity for a human consciousness to 
experience the world from a perspective radically other than its own. 
Despite the radically different ways in which they conceive of 
consciousness or of the subject, phenomenologists agree that, as intentional, 
consciousness is related to objects but is not itself an object. As intentional, 
consciousness relates to and experiences objects, but it does so always as 
subject and never as object. Even though the subject knows what it is like 
to relate to object—indeed it might be nothing else than this relation—it 
seems that it can never know what it is like to relate as an object. Can we 
alienate ourselves so completely that we think not of objects but as objects 
ourselves? Is not such an alien thinking a radical impossibility that any 
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“object-oriented” philosophy has to contend with? No matter how we 
conceive of the subject—as intentional consciousness, as ambiguous 
embodied consciousness, as a prism and filter that enables phenomena to 
appear, and so on—it remains trapped within itself. 
 Here, there might be a third avenue for dialogue, one that, without 
going as far as SR and OOO, lets phenomenology be provoked by this 
question of object-thinking. Some of the thought experiments offered by 
OOO, such as wondering what it is like for a house to experience having 
humans in it,5 can open our thinking to issues that are beyond the grasp of 
the phenomenological method. It might offer us a way to talk about 
materiality that helps point to reality in a different way. For those not 
content with remaining within the confines of phenomenology, it would 
offer a welcome addition to a phenomenology that does not concern itself 
enough with objects in themselves or the materiality (or object-like nature) 
of our beings in itself. This dialogue might give rise to a 
phenomenOOOlogy, one that accepts the challenge of thinking about what 
we purportedly cannot think about, while hanging on to the subjective 
experience we have as conscious beings, no matter how we conceive of that 
consciousness. A phenomenOOOlogy would be a philosophical position 
emerging out of a genuine dialogue between SR/OOO and phenomenology. 
It would be one that would not balk at the weaknesses identified in each 
philosophical position but would seek to remedy them by complementing 
each view. 
 The articles included in this special issue of PhaenEx continue the 
discussion we began at the panel over a year ago. They all tackle the new 
realist challenge and offer varying views on how to respond to it. They all 
agree that the charge of correlationism advanced by SR and OOO, with 
Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman as the main proponents of these 
views, is unfounded or at least problematic. Interestingly they also take a 
healthy critical stance toward phenomenology and point to some 
weaknesses in the method and theoretical positions embraced by 
phenomenologists.  
 The first three articles respond to the charge of correlationism 
leveled at phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, 
and Marion. In the text that opens this thematic section, G. Anthony Bruno 
argues that Meillassoux’s criticism of Heideggerian phenomenology rests 
on a misreading that neglects the role of the ontological difference in 
Heidegger’s philosophy. Specifically, Meillassoux fails to distinguish the 
ontic correlation of subject and object from the ontological co-manifestation 
of being and Dasein that is the condition of the former correlation. In so 
                                                 
5 This is a thought experiment Ian Bogost discusses at some length in his Alien 
Phenomenology: What Is It Like To Be a Thing. 
 
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Christine Daigle and Marie-Eve Morin 
 
 
doing, Meillassoux attributes to Heidegger a more extreme position of 
absolutizing the subject-object correlation and denying our ability to think 
the real world independently of the way it is presented to human subjects. 
This misreading, Bruno argues, stems from Meillassoux’s assumption of the 
truth of transcendental realism, which is revealed in his argument regarding 
the “arche-fossil.” This assumption is particularly problematic, Bruno 
points out, because it is the post-Kantian critique of this very notion that 
partly motivates Heidegger’s own brand of empirical realism.  
 J. Leavitt Pearl also challenges Meillassoux’s critique of 
phenomenology developed in his 2008 book, After Finitude, arguing that in 
that work Meillassoux mischaracterizes phenomenological givenness, 
which is portrayed as originating within the subject. By examining the 
notion of phenomenological givenness in Husserl, Heidegger, and Marion, 
Pearl points out that, in every instance, givenness is defined by 
heterogeneity—it refers to what is given to us, not to what emerges from us. 
Far from precluding our access to the unconditioned, external reality, 
phenomenological givenness enables us to grasp this reality in the terms in 
which it gives itself to us. 
 Robert Booth takes up a range of anti-correlationist criticisms of 
phenomenology, including those of Meillassoux, Harman, Sparrow, 
Morton, and Shaviro. By turning to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, 
Booth argues that these criticisms either miss the mark entirely or are 
inconsequential. Contrary to the anti-correlationist charge, Booth shows, 
Merleau-Ponty does retain inescapable categories of truth and reality, but 
these are grounded in perceptual co-expression of a shared world rather than 
transcendent acquaintance with a world-in-itself. Moreover, rather than 
limiting thought of the real, Merleau-Ponty’s commitment to shared 
embodiment does justice to the reality of the non-human world and the 
alterity of worldly entities. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty’s 
phenomenology is sufficiently reflective to avoid recasting in a new 
hierarchical form the traditional dualism of subject/object, or 
thought/world. 
 The remaining three articles, rather than defending phenomenology 
against the attacks of SR and OOO, seek to critically advance the realist 
program by turning to feminist, post-phenomenological and critical 
methodologies. Anna Mudde takes up Graham Harman’s object-oriented 
ontology for its critique of the philosophies of access and its proposed non-
anthropocentric ontology where human beings no longer occupy a 
privileged place in the ontological order. At the same time, Mudde shifts 
the emphasis away from a merely theoretical approach to ontology and 
inquires into the possibilities of practicing such a de-centralized ontology. 
Specifically, by turning to Haraway’s theory of companion species, as well 
as to the phenomenological conception of being-with other things, she 
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investigates the possibilities of conceiving of and practicing being human 
as a companion object in mutual prehension with other beings and objects. 
 Susanna Lindberg, for her part, brings together speculative realist, 
phenomenological, and post-phenomenological approaches by focusing on 
three contemporary techno-ontologies. Specifically, through an analysis of 
Levi Bryant’s “onto-cartography,” Graham Harman’s “tool-being,” and 
Jean-Luc Nancy’s “ecotechnology,” she argues that the concept of technics 
is a useful one insofar as it allows us to think being in terms of plurality, 
becoming, contingency, and materiality. These techno-ontologies, Lindberg 
argues, succeed in avoiding theological and nihilistic implications while at 
the same time challenging overly reductive, naturalistic varieties of 
materialism. 
 Finally, Dustin Zielke takes up the challenge of realism as 
formulated by Meillassoux and Harman. Through an approach he terms 
“critical phenomenology,” Zielke attempts to delimit the real from the 
intentional relation. He grants that the real refers to the actual existing, 
material things that are independent of the intentional relation, with 
intentionality being a contingent feature of the real. Nevertheless, according 
to Zielke, human beings experience the realness of the real—the excess and 
withdrawal of all things—through their practical activity of striving to 
survive in the universe. Consequently, Zielke argues, phenomenology is 
better suited than any speculative approach to grant us knowledge of the 
real.  
 We hope that the articles in this special issue will contribute to 
transforming the current dialogue of the deaf between phenomenology and 
SR and OOO into a fruitful dialogue.  
 
 
Works Cited 
BOGOST, Ian. Alien Phenomenology. What Is It Like To Be a Thing. 
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. 
DELANDA, Manuel and Graham Harman. The Rise of Realism. 
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017. 
RALÓN, Laureano. “Interview with Tom Sparrow.” Figure/Ground, July 
12, 2016 http://figureground.org/interview-with-tom-sparrow/ 
SPARROW, Tom. The End of Phenomenology. Metaphysics and the New 
Realism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. 
ZAHAVI, Dan. “The end of what? Phenomenology and Speculative 
Realism.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 24, no. 3 
(2016): 289-309. 


Editorial introduction: special issue on speculative realism and phenomenology

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Editorial introduction: special issue on speculative realism and phenomenology

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