Correlationism and the Transition from Transcendental Idealism to Realism

CORRELATIONISM AND THE TRANSITION FROM TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM TO TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM
Kevin Richmond Lewis
CORRELATIONISM AND THE TRANSITION

FROM TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM TO
TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM
I. INTRODUCTION
There has been much recent discussion concerning the so-called problem of
correlationism. According to the correlationist, thought and being are necessarily corelated. On this view being cannot be thought of without positing it in relation to some
form of subjective apprehension. This presupposition on the part of various contemporary
philosophies has come under a considerable amount of criticism. Two of the most
prominent critics of correlationism include Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier. For
both, the problem of correlationism stands in the way of a proper realism which is
motivated in part by the epistemic priority of the empirical sciences. Meillassouxs critique
of correlationism is a critique of the kind of transcendental philosophies represented by
Kant and Husserl. This construal of correlationism leads him to reject transcendental
philosophy through his notion of ancestrality. Brassier, concerned with pushing the project
of the Enlightenment to its nihilistic conclusion, also seeks to circumvent correlationism.
However, unlike Meillassoux he resituates the role of the transcendental through a noncorrelational account of extinction rather than dispense with transcendental philosophy en
masse. For Brassier, the reality of extinction necessitates the move from a transcendental
idealism to a transcendental realism, a move which is reinforced through his encounter
with the work of Francois Laruelle.
II. MEILLASSOUX AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL CORE

OF CORRELATIONISM
In After Finitude, Meillassoux attempts to prepare the conceptual groundwork for getting
outside ourselves in order to think the in itself as it is apart from its relation to thought.
A crucial part of this project involves the diagnosis of what he sees as a specific problem
endemic to contemporary philosophy.1 This problem he calls correlationism. According
to Meillassoux, correlationism involves "the idea according to which we only ever have
access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered
apart from the other."2 He adds further on:
Correlationism consists in disqualifying the claim that it is possible to consider the realms
of subjectivity and objectivity independently of one another. Not only does it become
1
After Finitude contains a number of challenging as well as controversial ideas which we cannot
elaborate on here. I will not, for instance, discuss Meillassouxs notion of hyper-chaos or his
principle of factiality. I will narrow the discussion to his account of ancestrality and the problem it
poses to correlationism.
2
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. R. Brassier
(Continuum, 2008), 5.
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necessary to insist that we never grasp an object 'in itself, in isolation from its relation to
the subject, but it also becomes necessary to maintain that we can never grasp a subject
that would not always-already be related to an object.3
If correlationism is tenable, then we cannot avoid what Meillassoux calls the

correlationist circle, which involves the notion that every attempt to think the in itself
apart from our subjective relation to it ends in contradiction. We must, in order to avoid the
threat of contradiction, embrace the priority of the relation between both poles of
experience, a principle which goes back to Berkeley and Kant.4 It should be noted that
correlationism encompasses a number of philosophical positions committed to the notion
that we do not have access to the world as it is apart from cognition, i.e., we cannot gain
entry into a mind-independent reality which is "outside" the space of thought. The mutual
reciprocity between thought and being is not limited to the relation between subjectivity
and objectivity. As Meillassoux puts it:
[W]e must emphasize that the correlation between thought and being is not reducible to
the correlation between subject and object. In other words, the fact that correlation
dominates contemporary philosophy in no way implies the dominance of philosophies of
representation. It is possible to criticize the latter in the name of a more originary
correlation between thought and being.5
This broad definition of correlationism includes Heideggerian ontology, according to

which Being is inseparable from the understanding of Being, as well as the so-called
philosophies of difference. Regardless of how the correlationist thesis is articulated, its
fundamental claim that the relation between thought and being is incontrovertible is
grounded in the subordination of the "in itself" to finitude, i.e., experience. This is the case
whether "finitude" is cashed out in terms of transcendental subjectivity or as an
intersubjective community, which is meant to play some mediating role between the
world-in-itself and the individual.
For Meillassoux, the commitment to correlationism ultimately ends in paradox once it
is confronted with what he calls an "arche-fossil." An arche-fossil refers to something that
preceded the existence of conscious life, such as the fact that the universe is roughly 13.5
billion years old, or that the origin of life occurred 3.5 billion years ago. These facts, which
are discovered by the empirical sciences, point to the existence of an ancestral realm which
preceded the emergence of life. These arche-fossils become a serious problem for the
3
Ibid.
Although Schopenhauer is not mentioned by Meillassoux, his repeated assertion regarding the
primacy of the relation between subject and object distills the essence of correlationism. At the
very beginning of The World as Will and Representation he writes: While each of these forms,
which we have recognized as so many particular modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is
valid only for a particular class of representation, of whatever kind it be, abstract or intuitive, pure
or empirical, is generally possible and conceivable. Therefore no truth is more certain, more
independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, namely that everything that exists for
knowledge, and hence the whole of this world, is only object in relation to the subject, perception
of the perceiver, in a word, representation. The World as Will and Representation: Vol. I, trans.
E.F.J. Payne (Dover, 1956), 3.
5
Ibid., 7-8.
4
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correlationist. If the relation between thought and being is insurmountable, then how does
the correlationist account for such facts? In other words, if the correlationist is right
regarding the notion that knowledge of the world always implies some form of givenness,
then how does he or she explain the meaning of scientific facts or events that occurred
prior to the advent of givenness itself?
According to Meillassoux, correlationism implies a commitment to a pernicious form
of anti-realism. The correlationist is ultimately forced to deny that the scientific statements
concerning arche-fossils are to be construed in a literal sense. In other words, the
correlationist is obliged to conclude that the literal meaning of an ancestral statement
describing an event that occurred prior to the advent of givenness can be considered true or
objective only in a qualified manner. For the correlationist, the statement The universe
is roughly 13.5 billion years old can be accepted as true in the sense that it is
intersubjectively verifiable. But to completely accept its literal meaning would be nave
according to the correlationist. It must ultimately be posited as a datum for us, i.e., the
true meaning of an ancestral statement can only be reached if we admit that what appears
to describe an event which occurred before the arrival of givenness can only make sense if
it involves a concealed relation to givenness itself.
Meillassoux explains the correlationist's predicament by highlighting the discrepancy
between ancestral time and the time of correlationism:
[F]or the correlationist, in order to grasp the profound meaning of the fossil datum, one
should not proceed from the ancestral past, but from the correlational present. This means
that we have to carry out a retrojection of the past on the basis of the present. What is
given to us, in effect, is not something that is anterior to givenness, but merely something
that is given in the present but gives itself as anterior to givenness. The logical
(constitutive, originary) anteriority of givenness over the being of the given therefore
enjoins us to subordinate the apparent sense of the ancestral statement to a more profound
counter-sense, which is alone capable of delivering its meaning: it is not ancestrality
which precedes givenness, but that which is given in the present which retrojects a
seemingly ancestral past. To understand the fossil, it is necessary to proceed from the
present to the past, following a logical order, rather than from the past to the present,
following a chronological order.6
This retrojection of the past on the basis of the present7 carried out by the correlationist
is tantamount to the complete undermining of the irremediable realism of the ancestral
statement. To try and reconcile the literal or apparent sense of the ancestral statement with
its more profound sense grounded in the commitment to correlationism is impossible
according to Meillassoux. Either an ancestral statement has a realist sense, and only a
Ibid., 16.
Once again, Schopenhauer is a good example of this retrojection with his paradoxical account
of the phenomenal world. Schopenhauer accepts that the inorganic preceded the emergence of
organic life. However, his commitment to Kantian idealism forces him to claim that the entire
phenomenal world, including the inorganic, is a product of one's cognitive faculties. The end result
is a situation in which both the mind conditions the world and the world conditions the mind, a
paradox grounded in his commitment to both transcendental idealism and materialism. See, for
instance, The World as Will and Representation: Vol. I (30-31).
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realist sense, or it has no sense at all.8 The solution to this contradictory state of affairs in
which the two incompatible levels of meaning are held together, of course, is to reject
correlationism as an untenable philosophical position. If the correlationist insists on
interpreting ancestral statements as consisting of both senses, then, according to
Meillassoux, he or she must resemble the creationist who maintains that the earth is 6,000
years old, and that God created evidence to the contrary (the arche-fossil) in order to test
his or her faith.
I now wish to discuss two possible rejoinders the correlationist can make in response to
the objection from ancestrality mentioned by Meillassoux because they reveal what Paul J.
Ennis calls the transcendental core of correlationism.9 I will not be concerned with
examining Meillassouxs counter-arguments against the correlationist. I present them here
simply because they help reinforce Meillassouxs hostility towards transcendentalism.
The first rejoinder is a version of an anti-idealist argument which compares the
ancestral objections emphasis on temporal priority to spatial distance, while the second
accuses the critic of correlationism of overlooking the transcendental-empirical distinction.
In regards to the first, the correlationist formulates the objection from ancestrality as
concerned with events devoid of a possible witness. One can, according to the
correlationist, extend to space an argument which has hitherto been restricted to time, and
adjoin the question of the distant to the question of the ancient.10 For example, craters
observed on the moon are closer to us in terms of perception, than a falling vase where
there is no one present to witness its falling. The anti-idealist objection raised by the critic
of correlationism involves a commitment to the notion that what is un-witnessed is unthinkable unless one upholds realism. But, the correlationist insists, this underestimates
idealisms ability to account for the lacunary nature of what is given. For instance, it has
been well known since Husserl that what is given is not perceived all at once; rather, it
implies something non-given, i.e., it must present itself within a possible horizon that
sustains every possible adumbration (Abschattung), a horizon which is an intrinsic feature
of perceptual experience. In a similar manner, the critic of correlationism simply overlooks
the fact that had there been a witness, then this occurrence would have been perceived in
such and such a fashion.11 More specifically, had there been a witness to an arche-fossil,
he or she would have witnessed its occurrence according to the laws of science.
Meillassoux responds to this rejoinder by pointing out that the correlationist ignores the
distinction between what is ancestral and what is ancient (or what is distant in the
case of space). The argument involves construing what is strictly anterior to givenness
itself as an ancient event which already presupposes givenness, i.e., it is, although unwitnessed, contemporaneous with consciousness. In contrast, an arche-fossil refers to an
ancestral time which does not refer to occurrences which a lacunary givenness cannot
8
Ibid., 17.
See Paul J. Ennis, The Transcendental Core of Correlationism, in Cosmos and History, vol. 7,
no. 1, 2011, 37-48. I agree with Ennis claim that the core of correlationism involves the
commitment to the transcendental method as it is espoused by thinkers such as Kant and Husserl.
However, Meillassouxs critique of correlationism does not necessarily lead to a complete rejection
of transcendentalism as such provided one does not overlook the possibility of a transcendental
realism. I hope to show how this is the case when discussing Brassiers account of extinction.
10
Meillassoux, After Finitude, 18.
11
Ibid., 19.
9
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apprehend, but to occurrences which are not contemporaneous with any givenness,
whether lacunary or not.12
The second rejoinder is far more explicit regarding the transcendentalism underlying
correlationism. Meillassoux examines the correlationists claim that the critic of
correlationism is guilty of overlooking the difference between the empirical time of bodies
and that which transcendentally conditions our knowledge of the empirical world. The
latter is, according to the correlationist, not an object of empirical observation. It is argued
that it is important to clearly distinguish between the two in order to avoid any possible
paradoxes associated with their intersection. Granted, the physical organ which supports
the transcendental conditions of knowledge has a beginning and end in time. However, the
critic of correlationism treats the transcendental conditions governing knowledge of the
empirical world in the same manner. In other words, he or she construes the transcendental
register as if it also has a temporal beginning and end. But this will not do because such
conditions necessarily lie outside time. This is not to say that they are eternal, but it is to
say that what is transcendental cannot be accounted for in terms of the time described by
science. Therefore, the objection from ancestrality does not have any effect on the status of
the transcendental insofar as it is properly understood.
The problem with this approach, as Meillassoux points out, is that the transcendental
conditions underlying knowledge of the empirical world presupposes a finite point-ofview. This must be the case if the correlationist wishes to avoid turning transcendental
subjectivity (however it is conceived) into an eternal or metaphysical principle. In other
words, what is transcendental must be related in some manner to a body situated within the
empirical world. Given that such is the case, it remains inexplicable how to account for the
origin of the transcendental. If the two are inseparable, then how does one account for the
fact that the transcendental must emerge from the empirical time of bodies?
Correlationism, according to Meillassoux cannot account for the sudden appearance of the
transcendental. Indeed, it appears as though there is an unbridgeable "gap" or discrepancy
between the cosmological time of material bodies and the time that begins with the advent
of the transcendental. Meillassoux writes:
We thereby discover that the time of science temporalizes and spatializes the emergence
of living bodies; that is to say, the emergence of the conditions for the taking place of the
transcendental. What effectively emerged with living bodies were the instantiations of
the subject, its character as point-of-view-on-the-world. The fact that subjects emerged
here on this earth or existed elsewhere is a purely empirical matter. But the fact that
subjects appeared ~ simply appeared - in time and space, instantiated by bodies, is a
matter that pertains indissociably both to objective bodies and to transcendental subjects.
And we realize that this problem simply cannot be thought from the transcendental
viewpoint because it concerns the space-time in which transcendental subjects went from
not-taking-place to taking-place - and hence concerns the space-time anterior to the
spatio-temporal forms of representation. To think this ancestral space-time is thus to
think the conditions of science and also to revoke the transcendental as essentially
inadequate to this task.13
In other words, the transcendental viewpoint cannot explain its own origin without the aid
12
13
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 25-26.
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of the scientific description of time.14 The closest one can come to an explanation
regarding the emergence of both the transcendental dimension and the bodies that
undeniably condition it is to accept the notion that it is possible to describe the in itself
without positing a prior relation between the world and finitude.
As I have already indicated above, Brassier confronts the problem of correlationism
from a very different standpoint, namely through a non-correlational account of extinction.
Moreover, this account of extinction plays a transcendental role, albeit one which is not of
the Kantian or phenomenological variety Meillassoux seeks to critique. Although Brassier
himself is critical of Meillassouxs concept of ancestrality, his attempt to refute
correlationism from the perspective of extinction does not involve a complete rejection of
Meillassouxs primary concerns. Indeed, Brassier (as well as others) regard After Finitude
as an impressive work due to its originality as well as argumentative rigor.15 A great deal
of what appears in Brassiers own nihilistic project should be construed as a much needed
supplement to the basic core of Meillassouxs primary concern, i.e., the attempt to get
outside of ourselves, to grasp the in-itself, to know what is whether we are or not.16
However, before turning to Brassier it is necessary to take a brief detour involving a
discussion concerning Laruelles non-philosophy. For Brassier, it is Laruelles nonphilosophy which provides the conceptual resources needed for developing a
transcendental realism capable of bypassing the transcendental idealism behind
correlationism.
III. LARUELLE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM OF

NON-PHILOSOPHY
In order to attain a proper understanding of the transcendental role of extinction, it is first
necessary to have some grasp of the way in which Brassier uses certain concepts
borrowed from Laruelles non-philosophy. Laruelle plays a major role throughout
Brassiers Nihil Unbound. Nevertheless, I will not attempt to engage in a detailed
discussion of Laruelles project of non-philosophy. I merely wish to present a simplified
model of non-philosophy as a way to elucidate Brassiers notion of extinction, which I
Sartre mentions this paradoxical emergence of the for-itself (consciousness) from the in-itself
in his discussion of temporality in Being and Nothingness. According to Sartre, metaphysical
questions regarding the sudden appearance of the for-itself are to be ignored because they concern
a past which does not exist apart from the ecstatic structure of the for-itself. Indeed, he simply
explains the origin of consciousness in terms of a primordial nihilation of the in-itself. See JeanPaul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. (Washington Square Press, 1956), 197-199.
15
Regarding the novelty of Meillassouxs critique, Alain Badiou in the preface to After Finitude
writes: It would be no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in
the history of philosophy, hitherto conceived as the history of what it is to know; a path that
circumvents Kants canonical distinction between dogmatism, skepticism and critique. (AF,
vii). Martin Hagglund offers a more sober approach when he writes that Meillassouxs work
invites philosophical argumentation rather than reverence or dismissal. Radical Atheist
Materialism: A Critique of Meillassoux, in The Speculative Turn, ed. L. Bryant, N. Srnicek, & G.
Harman (Melbourne, 2011), 114.
16
Meillassoux, After Finitude, 27.
14
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will discuss in section IV.17

What Laruelle is after is a transcendental science of philosophy.18 But in order for
there to be such a science there must be a position from which philosophy itself can
become an object of study. Everything hinges upon the order of priority between
philosophy and the real. Philosophy attempts to think the real. Non-philosophy, the
position from which Laruelle believes philosophy can become a scientific object, is a
transformation of the order of priority between philosophy and the real through which the
real thinks philosophy. Non-philosophy is a transcendental science of philosophy on the
basis of the real, or what Laruelle calls the One.19
Laruelle defines philosophy in terms of what he calls Decision. Decision denotes the
same structure as what Meillassoux and Brassier call correlationism. For Laruelle,
philosophy is inherently decisional because it cannot avoid positing a dyadic unity (unityin-difference) which involves a mutual reciprocity between the real and ideal, thought
and being, condition and conditioned, etc. There is always a co-positing of an empirical
datum (the conditioned) and an a priori facktum (condition) as well as their synthetic
unity. This decisional unity-of-contraries, which occurs in a variety of different forms, is
the essence of philosophys auto-legislation as well as auto-fetishization. For philosophy,
the real (or One) cannot exist apart from this structure of decision; it must remain forever
within philosophys own self-operations of scission, mediation, reversal, etc. Laruelle
calls philosophys belief in its own capacity to constitute the real the Principle of
Sufficient Philosophy (PSP):
Philosophy is regulated in accordance with a principle higher than that of Reason: the
Principle of sufficient philosophy. The latter expresses philosophys absolute autonomy,
its essence as self-positing/donating/naming/deciding/grounding, etc. It guarantees
philosophys command of the regional disciplines and sciences. Ultimately, it articulates
the idealist pretension of philosophy as that which is able to at least co-determine that
Real which is most radical.20
Non-philosophy is not a negation of philosophy or a deconstructive procedure.21 NonTo present a simplified model of non-philosophy implies that I will not be overly concerned
with distinguishing between the different phases of Laruelles work, i.e., the various distinctions
between Philosophies I, II, and III.
18
The idea of non-philosophy being a science of philosophy comes from Philosophy II. Laruelle
will later on choose to describe non-philosophy as a unified theory of philosophy and science in
Principles of Non-Philosophy, a crucial text outlining the basis of Philosophy III.
19
Nick Srnicek, in a footnote, points out (correctly, I believe) the similarity between Laruelles
transcendental project of non-philosophy and Husserls transcendental phenomenology: In some
sense, Laruelles project can be seen as a radical continuation of Husserls project to begin with
ultimate immanence. But whereas Husserl and every phenomenologist afterwards have
characterized immanence in relation to some other basic term, Laruelle is suspending the selfsufficiency of all these determinations. Capitalism and the Non-Philosophical Subject, in The
Speculative Turn, ed. L. Bryant, N. Srnicek, & G. Harman (Melbourne, 2011), 167.
17
Francois Laruelle, A Summary of Non-Philosophy, trans. R. Brassier, in Pli, vol. 8, 1999, 138139.
21
Laruelle prefers to compare his use of the prefix non to the use of non in the sense of nonEuclidean geometry. Non-philosophy would then be equivalent to a mutation of philosophy as
20
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philosophy is non-philosophical insofar as it is concerned with getting beyond

philosophys decisional essence. It requires a separation from philosophys circular (selfpositing) nature in order to situate philosophy itself from the standpoint of science, or
what Laruelle calls vision-in-One: In the introduction to Philosophy and NonPhilosophy he writes:
Non-philosophys essence [] consists in substituting the structural and transcendental
rule of philosophical decision, the rule of Unity-of-contraries [dyadic unity], of the
circular simultaneity of two principles the One and the Dyad, supposed coextensive
for a completely different principle, that of vision-in-One, which dismembers the
One/Dyad system of philosophical decision and rigorously subordinates the Dyad to the
One, which is first of all restored to its real or ante-dyadic essence.22
The One, according to Laruelle, is itself devoid of division; it is strictly speaking

indivisible. It is a pure or singular immanence which is given (to) itself without
alienation; it is a lived experience (of) self that is precisely experienced in its own mode,
the specific mode of the One.23 Moreover, it is given-without-givenness, which implies
that it belongs to a type of given that is radically given (to) itself rather than to a subject
or to any other form of transcendence, and which is thus given without an operation of
assumed givenness behind it, a background of the given.24
This absolute autonomy on the part of the One is denied through philosophical decision.
Whereas philosophy subordinates the real as One to a Dyad, non-philosophy transforms
philosophy itself into a material or object of a transcendental science which proceeds from
the One rather than from the circular (self-contained) structure of philosophy. This
resituating or reversal of philosophy from the standpoint of vision-in-One, a resituating
which reduces philosophys self-sufficiency (PSP) to a state of contingency, is what
Laruelle, borrowing an expression from Althussers structuralist reading of Marx, calls
determination-in-the-last-instance. For Althusser, determination-in-the-last-instance
refers to the notion that, although the economic base or infrastructure has primacy over the
superstructure, the superstructure is granted a certain degree of relative autonomy.
However, Laruelle redefines the idea of determination in such a way that it refers to the
priority of the real as the conditioning factor, not the economy. This implies, of course, that
philosophy possesses a relative autonomy with respect to the real. This means that the real
acts as the sine qua non of philosophy, but that the non-philosophical determination of
philosophy on the basis of the One simultaneously requires the relative autonomy of
philosophy to effectuate this determination. This effectuation is the necessary step towards
thinking in accordance with the real instead of trying to think the real. The latter
proceeds from the Dyad to the One. The former proceeds from the One in order to
determine the Dyad of philosophical decision. The determination is unilateral because
there is no reciprocity between the One and philosophy. To introduce reciprocity would be
to reintroduce the self-sufficiency of philosophical decision with respect to the real,
opposed to its destruction.
22
Francois Laruelle, Philosophy and Non-Philosophy, trans. T. Adkins (Univocal, 2013), 16.
23
Ibid., 43.
24
Francois Laruelle, Principles of Non-Philosophy, trans. N. Rubczak & A. P. Smith (Bloomsbury,
2013), 21.
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thereby overlooking the radical immanence of the One:

Unilateralization belongs to this very special type of causality or of efficacy: of the One
on philosophy, but in such a way that nothing of philosophy turns back on or recurs
on the One. Last instance is the mode of determination when it is strictly unilateral
and undivided and when the effect cannot determine its cause in return when it is not
shared between two terms.
Because any possible co-relation or reciprocity between philosophy and non-philosophy is

suspended through vision-in-One, the relation between them is a form of non-relation
which exhibits the structure of a unilateral duality. In other words, philosophy, because
of its nature as decision, distinguishes itself from non-philosophy without the latter
distinguishing itself from the former. Non-philosophy determines philosophy, rendering its
decisional structure inert, but without maintaining a dialectical relation to philosophy. If it
were possible for non-philosophy to be dialectically reinscribed with respect to philosophy,
i.e., if the relation between the two were not unilateral, then it would be possible to
reestablish the authority of philosophical decision or the principle of sufficient philosophy.
Non-philosophy carries out a transcendental deduction of what Laruelle calls the a
prioris of philosophy. These are a prioris which can only be seen from the perspective
of vision-in-One. This transcendental deduction of philosophy does not involve referential
statements about philosophy. The non-philosophical determination of philosophy must be
construed as axiomatic in character. This is what keeps Laruelles project from becoming a
neo-Platonic exercise concerned with a mystical intuition of or union with the One.
Philosophy is not an emanation from the One; it is a theorem derived from vision-in-One
as non-philosophys fundamental axiom. In this way, non-philosophy effectively turns the
transcendent structure of philosophy into an object, but it becomes an object which is
given-without-givenness. If vision-in-One is grounded in radical immanence, then it must
not (or cannot) posit a co-relation between a transcendental subject and a transcendent yet
immanently constituted object. To posit such a relation is to reestablish philosophical
decision, thereby reintroducing transcendence into immanence. Laruelle does speak of a
non-philosophical subject (what he calls the Stranger), but it is a subject which is purely
performative. It does not exist apart from the transcendental operations performed by
non-philosophy on philosophy. This performative subject is also non-thetic because it is
already separated from any kind of philosophical decision which would situate it within a
duality involving the distinction between givenness and what is given. As Brassier puts it,
the subject of non-philosophy
is no longer the phenomenological subject, whether the latter be construed in terms of
intentional consciousness or being-in-the-world. But nor is it the subject as caesura, selfrelating negativity. It is neither the explicitly reflexive, self-conscious subject, nor the
pre-reflexive, unconscious subject, who is merely the obverse of the latter and therefore
implicitly enveloped by decisional reflexivity. It is simply a function: the transcendental
function which non-philosophy effectuates for philosophy on the basis of immanence as
real invariant and decision as occasional variable.25
Ray Brassier, Axiomatic Heresy: The Non-Philosophy of Francois Laruelle, in Radical

Philosophy 121, 2003, 30.
25
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More importantly, the subject of non-philosophy determines its own conditions of

manifestation through determination-in-the-last-instance. What began as an object of
philosophy, i.e., the real, becomes, through determination-in-the-last-instance, the subject
which transcendentally conditions philosophical decision as its object. This reversal
should not be construed as a mere reversal of roles between subject and object. They do
not merely switch places. What occurs is a non-reflexive or immanent identity between
subject and object which is non-dialectical. Unlike Hegels Absolute, which effectuates the
coincidence of subject and object through dialectical mediation, the non-philosophical
coincidence or identity between subject and object is grounded in the radical immanence of
vision-in-One which is indifferent to the activity of mediation characteristic of
philosophical decision.
What exactly does non-philosophy do aside from demonstrate the contingency of
philosophy? Although non-philosophy does not seek to negate philosophy, otherwise it
would maintain a dialectical relation to it, it seeks to use philosophy. Laruelle envisions
non-philosophy as having a practical vocation represented by an immanent pragmatics of
philosophical language. In Principles of Non-Philosophy, which outlines the basis of
Philosophy III, non-philosophy receives an explicitly democratic voice which is opposed
to philosophys hierarchical mode of organization.26 The reduction of philosophical
decision to an inert material implies the establishment of an egalitarianism through which
the self-sufficiency of philosophy and its inherent tendency towards hierarcherization is
suspended. I will not go into the details of this aspect of non-philosophy simply because
Laruelles attempt to establish a democracy of theory plays no significant role with
respect to Brassiers project. What is important for our present concerns is to understand
that non-philosophy is tantamount to a transcendental realism. It is transcendental
insofar as it seeks to transform philosophy into an empirical datum, thereby determining its
a priori structure(s) from the non-thetic perspective of vision-in-One. It is a realism in
the sense that it begins with the real itself (radical immanence) instead of trying to think or
constitute the real on the basis of philosophical decision.
It is helpful to distinguish between the transcendentalism of non-philosophy from the
transcendentalism of philosophy. The latter is always, according to Laruelle, a
transcendental idealism. It is idealistic because of its pretensions to constitute the real or at
least situate the real within the mixture-form (the One and the Dyad) of philosophical
decision. In contrast, the transcendentalism of non-philosophy begins with the separation
of the real from philosophys mixture-form in order to demonstrate the illusory status of
the latter on the basis of the former. From the standpoint of non-philosophy, the
transcendental structure of philosophy is reduced to an empirical given. In this sense, the
transcendentalism of non-philosophy involves what Brassier calls a hypertranscendental
perspective.
In the next section I will show how Brassier radicalizes Laruelles transcendental
realism through a critique of transcendence on the basis of extinction. Brassier proposes a
fully developed transcendental nihilism which borrows a great deal from non-philosophy.
Contra Meillassoux, the transcendental reality of extinction demonstrates that it is possible
to bypass correlationism without jettisoning transcendental philosophy as a whole.
26
Ibid., 48-52.
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IV. BRASSIER AND THE REALITY OF EXTINCTION

For Brassier, nihilism is the natural consequence of the claim that there exists a mindindependent reality which is devoid of value or meaning. According to Brassier,
correlationism involves the attempt to posit a pre-existing relation or bond between the
world and our subjective apprehension of it in order to ensure that meaning is an
indissociable feature of experience. Brassiers nihilistic project is tantamount to a radical
critique of this attempt to reestablish meaningful experience through the auspices of
correlationism. I will be concerned primarily with the transcendental dimension of this
project as it is presented in Nihil Unbound. I will not be concerned with summarizing the
entirety of Brassier's Nihil Unbound; to attempt to do so would be a difficult task given the
book's semi-labyrinthine structure. My focus will be on Brassier's fundamental claim
regarding the transcendental role of extinction and its relation to Laruelles nonphilosophy.
Brassier proposes a transcendental realism which he believes is consonant with the
nihilistic will to know (truth) underlying the Enlightenments disenchantment of the
world. In the preface to Nihil Unbound he writes:
[T]he disenchantment of the world understood as a consequence of the process whereby
the Enlightenment shattered the great chain of being and defaced the book of the
world is a necessary consequence of the coruscating potency of reason, and hence an
invigorating vector of intellectual discovery, rather than a calamitous diminishment.27
This concern with the Enlightenment places Brassier within the vicinity of Meillassouxs
project. However, he believes Meillassouxs critique of correlationism on the basis of
ancestrality is not strong enough to refute the correlationist's arguments. According to
Brassier, it is always possible for the correlationist to reinscribe the anteriority of the
arche-fossil as a postulate "for us" within a chronological framework. In contrast, Brassier,
in order to avoid this possibility, adds a more radical dimension to Meillassoux's critique of
correlationism, namely the reality of extinction. For Brassier, a proper understanding of
extinction leads to the provocative revelation that we are already dead.
Brassier adopts Lyotard's challenge to philosophy in his "Can Thought go on without a
Body" concerning the inevitability of a future solar catastrophe.28 The fact that we know
that the sun will die in roughly 4.5 billion years from now proves to be devastating to
every terrestrial, i.e., finite, horizon. The death of the sun entails the complete annihilation
of every form of human-orientation with which philosophy would attempt to position
itself, regardless of whether the finite horizon in question is Husserl's "Ur-earth,"
Heidegger's "Being," or Deleuzes "deterritorialisation." It obliterates even the conceptual
negativity underlying Hegelian subjectivity. In any case, the inevitable death of the sun
already unravels every possible modality of finite transcendence. Not only is the sun set on
the path of dissolution, matter itself will be disintegrated. Indeed, "Every star in the
universe will have burnt out, plunging the cosmos into a state of absolute darkness and
27
Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), xi.

Jean Francois Lyotard, "Can Thought go on without a Body?" in The Inhuman: Reflections on
Time, trans., G. Bennington & R. Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 8-23.
28
- 11 -
leaving behind nothing but spent husks of collapsed matter."29 According to Brassier:
Everything is dead already. Solar death is catastrophic because it vitiates ontological
temporality as configured in terms of philosophical questionings constitutive horizonal
relationship to the future. But far from lying in wait in for us in the far distant future, on
the other side of the terrestrial horizon, the solar catastrophe needs to be grasped as
something that has already happened; as the aboriginal trauma driving the history of
terrestrial life as an elaborately circuitous detour from stellar death. Terrestrial history
occurs between the simultaneous strophes of a death which is at once earlier than the
birth of the first unicellular organism, and later than the extinction of the last
multicellular animal.30
The future demise of the sun, as well as of all matter, entails the truth of extinction with
respect to all present life. The fact that death is "before" as well as "after" life means that
extinction itself is to be characterized as an "anterior posteriority" that subsumes (or
swallows) every possible finite point-of-view. The reality of extinction is the absolute
endpoint which overwhelms the present of human finitude, not in an indifferent manner,
but as internally destroying its legitimacy as the fulcrum upon which correlationism rests.
The time of extinction represents the death of thought, a time which, through its
incapacitation of thought, turns thought itself into an object by disentangling all forms of
interior exteriority or transcendence in immanence. He writes further on:
Extinction portends a physical annihilation which negates the difference between mind
and world, but which can no longer be construed as a limit internal to the transcendence
of mind an internalized exteriority, as death is for Geist or Dasein because it implies
an exteriority which unfolds or externalizes the internalization of exteriority concomitant
with consciousness and its surrogates, whether Geist or Dasein. Extinction turns thinking
inside out, objectifying it as a perishable thing in the world like any other (and no longer
the imperishable condition of perishing).31
Extinction causes the collapse of transcendence in such a way that there results a nondialectical identity between thought and object. The non-dialectical identity between
thought and object is based on a radical immanence which is anterior as well as posterior
with respect to the advent of givenness. Brassier, in order to elucidate the idea of a
coincidence between thought and the real, conjoins Lyotards notion of stellar death with
Freud's account of the death-drive as it is presented in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. He
adopts Freud's controversial claim, derived from the phenomenon of traumatic repetition,
that the ultimate aim of all life is death, or the notion that the organic has the originary
tendency to return to the inorganic. The death-drive carries out a binding of extinction
through which thought coincides with the real.
Having presented a basic account of Brassiers notion of extinction, it is now possible
to further elucidate its transcendental role with the aid of Laruelles non-philosophy. To
begin with, Brassier replaces Laruelles transcendental immanence of vision-in-One with a
transcendental nihilism grounded in the real as being-nothing. But this transcendental
29
Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 228.

Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound, 223.
31
Ibid., 229.
30
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nihilism is also a transcendental realism. Like Laruelles One, being-nothing is to be

understood in terms of radical immanence. It is given-without-givenness insofar as it is
initially indifferent to the circle of correlationism (Laruelles philosophical decision).
Moreover, it implies a non-dialectical negativity which knows neither opposition nor
contradiction.32 This negativity, because of its non-correlational status, is not in the
service of a Hegelian Subject which presupposes a correlational circle within which
negativity is implicated as the catalyst of a higher synthesis between subject and object.
The real as being-nothing escapes the logic of mediation because it is strictly immanent to
itself.
Extinction represents the non-dialectical identity between thought and the real as
being-nothing. This is why extinction is not to be simply construed in terms of physical
annihilation. It represents the decisive moment wherein the real thinks itself through
thought, thereby transforming thought itself into an object. The transformation of thought
into an object (the absence of correlationism) corresponds to the unilateralizing force of
Laruelles determination-in-the-last-instance:
Determination-in-the-last-instance involves an ascesis of thought whereby the latter
abjures the trappings of intellectual intuition as well as objectifying representation. By
submitting to the logic of determination-in-the-last-instance, thought ceases to intend,
apprehend, or reflect the object; it becomes non-thetic and is thereby turned into a vehicle
for what is unobjectifiable in the object itself. The object becomes at once the patient and
the agent of its own cognitive determination.33
The transformation of thought into an object results in a non-reflective identity. Thought is

transformed into a pure immanence which is not posited in relation to the a priori
conditions presupposed by correlationisms dyadic structure, whether such conditions are
explained in terms of Being-in-the-world, transcendental subjectivity, Life, etc. This is
what it ultimately means to think in accordance with the real instead of trying to think
the real on the basis of (to use the language of Laruelle) philosophical decision.
Despite Laruelles influence, the determination-in-the-last-instance which occurs
through the thought of extinction effectively destroys the locus of correlationism in its
entirety. For Laruelle, determination-in-the-last-instance renders philosophical decision
inert in order to free philosophy from its illusory sense of self-sufficiency. The thought
of extinction radicalizes this aspect of Laruelles non-philosophy by transforming
thoughts ability to think in accordance with the real (being-nothing) into a destructive
possibility. Contrary to Laruelle, Brassier maintains that the non-dialectical negativity of
the real harbors a positive negativity capable of effectuating a surgical intervention
which involves severing terms from relations, amputating reciprocity, and sharpening
one-sidedness.34 Whereas non-philosophy sets out to suspend the self-sufficiency of
correlationism on the basis of the real, the real as being-nothing effectively dismembers
correlationism through the thought of extinction, which represents a coincidence of
thought with the real. Due to its destructive potential, the thought of extinction functions,
not only as the basis for a transcendental realism, but also as a philosophical justification
32
Ibid., 147.
Ibid., 139.
34
Ibid., 147.
33
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for a transcendental nihilism.

Regardless, what Brassiers account of extinction represents, at least for the purposes of
this paper, is the transition from transcendental idealism to transcendental realism. We saw
above how Meillassouxs ancestral critique of correlationism pointed out some of the
conceptual paradoxes that accompany the former. However, Meillassoux assumes that
transcendental philosophy must be grounded in some form of idealism, whether Kantian or
Husserlian. Although it is true that there is a transcendental core to either species of
correlationism, neither exhausts transcendental philosophy as a whole. Brassier has shown,
with the aid of Laruelles non-philosophy, how it is possible to replace the idealist
pretensions of correlationism with a transcendental realism which explains how thought is
conditioned by the real.
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Before concluding, it is worthwhile to return to the correlationists second rejoinder
discussed by Meillassoux because it helps demonstrate the effectiveness of the kind of
transcendental realism presented above. We saw how, according to the correlationist, the
critic of correlationism is guilty of overlooking the transcendental-empirical distinction.
The correlationist wishes to situate the transcendental conditions of knowledge apart from
the empirical time of bodies, and that the attempt to conceive of the transcendental realm in
intra-worldly terms ends in paradox. However, according to Meillassoux, the correlationist
cannot maintain a strong separation between the transcendental and the empirical because
the former must be instantiated with respect to a finite point-of-view, i.e., a body. The
fact that the transcendental conditions of knowledge cannot be described in empirical
terms, even though such conditions must be instantiated within a body, leaves the problem
concerning the origin of the transcendental a mystery, a mystery which transcendental
philosophy (idealism) cannot solve on its own. If the transcendental is conceived on the
basis of subjectivity, whether it is construed in terms of cognition or Being-in-the-world,
no account can be given of how the transcendental emerges from within the material
world. The transcendental realism behind Brassiers account of extinction sidesteps this
problem by separating the transcendental realm from the conventional transcendentalempirical distinction which governs philosophical idealism. Following Laruelle, Brassier
grants the real with a transcendental capacity. Moreover, the relation between thought and
the real is non-reciprocal; the real conditions thought without thought conditioning the real
in turn (Laruelles unilateral duality). But this is simply another way of rejecting the
standard transcendental-empirical distinction. Once the transcendental conditions of
manifestation (or givenness) are located outside the circle of correlationism, it becomes
possible to escape idealism in all its forms.
However much Brassiers transcendental realism avoids the conceptual pitfalls of
correlationism, there is a significant problem worth considering. It is not really clear how
extinction is supposed to play a transcendental role if it is meant to incapacitate thought.
The claim that we are already dead implies that life (construed in terms of
transcendence) is an illusion of sorts. To be more specific, it implies that both life and
death are unreal. The question arises how the positive negativity of extinction can function
on a transcendental level if it simultaneously destroys what it conditions. This makes
Brassiers account of extinction appear similar in many ways to Derridas notion of
diffrance. A further question concerning whether or not Brassiers nihilism is compatible
- 14 -
with his commitment to transcendental realism. The problematic nature of Brassiers

attempt to provide a transcendental justification for nihilism is already apparent within
Nihil Unbound, which gives the book itself a certain experimental quality. Although I
have not discussed Brassiers relation to Wilfrid Sellars, it is clear that the work of Sellars
has played an increasingly important role with regard to Brassiers project, especially
given that Sellars and a handful of his successors have proposed a sophisticated version of
transcendental realism. While it is true that Brassier devotes the first chapter of Nihil
Unbound to an in-depth discussion of Sellars distinction between the manifest image and
the scientific image, Sellars claim regarding the indispensable status of normativity is not
given full consideration.35 A crucial part of Sellars thought is that conceptual norms are
irreducible to the scientific image of man-in-the-world, a position which seems
incompatible with Brassiers nihilism. Whether the latter can in fact be reconciled with
the former position remains to be seen.
The most famous presentation of Sellars distinction between the manifest image and the
scientific image can be found in his crucial paper Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, in
In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, ed. K. Scharp & R. Brandom (Harvard
University Press, 2007).
35
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Correlationism and the Transition from Transcendental Idealism to Realism

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CORRELATIONISM AND THE TRANSITION FROM TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM TO TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

Kevin Richmond Lewis