For Object-Oriented Philosophy, there is no direct access to the outside reality. Instead, this access is indirect, allusive, or vicarious. Since traditional Islamic thought is not strange to OOP, this text uses Rumi’s fable “Elephant in the Dark” to place the use of metaphoric language in a central means of the technology of speculation so crucial for speculative realists like Graham Harman.
1. There is an elephant is the dark
Jalad-Din Muhammad Rumi was a Persian poet and scholar in 13th century AD. As one of the most famous historical figures in Islamic culture, his works have been translated into different languages and distributed worldwide. The story I am exploring here is one of his poems published in his masterpiece Masnavi Manavi. To begin, I am providing the translation of the poem and in the following paragraphs, I will discuss some of the key principles of Harman’s OOP, returning to the poem to show the connections between OOP and Rumi’s epistemology embedded in the poem.
Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.
One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk. “A water-pipe kind of creature.”
Another, the ear. “A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal.”
Another, the leg. “I find it still, like a column on a temple.”
Another touches the curved back. “A leathery throne.”
Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. “A rounded sword made of porcelain.”
He’s proud of his description.
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are
how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.
If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it.[1]
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT ORIENTED PHILOSOPHY
1. Reality is weird
The word “object” is commonly understood as a tangible and physical thing that exists in the outside world. However, it is crucial to understand how Object-Oriented Philosophy (OOP) or to be specific Harman’s version of OOP alters this presumption. According to him, “[T]here is only one type of entity, Objects[2]. This sentence summarizes the significant shift in redefining the word object proposed by OOP that might seem bizarre and peculiar to the audience at first and perhaps to be better understood, we ought to step back and look at theories of the object which gives it a multifaceted reality.
In his seminal work, The Nature of the Physical World, Arthur Eddington describes his theory of objects by claiming that when he sits down to write he draws his chair to not one table but two: “Two tables! Yes; there are duplicates of every object about me – two tables, two chairs, two pens.”[3] Here, Eddington is referring to the two manifestations of one object, for example, a scientific table (made up of atoms, electrons and other particles) and a practical everyday table (solid, hard, colored, etc.) Although this may make sense from a physicist’s point of view, Harman argues that Eddington falls into two traps of undermining and overmining. He states that an object can be reduced neither to its constituents and components (undermining,) nor to its effects or what it does (overmining.) In a domain of material science like metallurgy, undermining takes place when an object is paraphrased in terms of its atoms or electrons. Although OOP doesn’t refute the importance and existence of atoms, electrons and other physical realities of any object, it does state that such an approach cannot explain the significance of emergence where the integrity of an object is preserved even if some of its particles are replaced or transformed. For instance, when a person paints an old table or replaces its broken leg, the table stays the same though it has different atoms and parts. On the other hand, overmining, refers to the act of reducing objects to their effects on each other and us. In this approach, a table is the one on which I can put my laptop, or a hammer is an object by which I can hammer a nail. OOP argues against this notion for it falls short to explain potentiality. A table is not an object merely because one can use and put her laptop on it or a hammer is not simply a tool for me to hammer a nail. Objects have surpluses. A broken hammer is no less of an object in comparison to a working one. Also, a table that I may suddenly use to block my room’s door to prevent the serial killer from entering my house to murder me is still the very same table.
Following this definition, for OOP, the category of objects expands immensely regardless of the size of objects, their simplicity, or complexity. For OOP, objects such as an airplane, a continent, the Milky way, an atom, a goth teenager, a group of revolutionaries, communism, a box of tissues, pipe, World War II, global warming, an artwork, an army, Dutch East India Company, a married couple, and an elephant are equally objects. An object is that which cannot be paraphrased and that which retains its unexpressed surpluses in any interactions at any moment. one can imagine a plus sign on the top of the word Object+. The plus sign is an indication of the hidden potentialities or the surplus within objects. The plus sign also points out another important notion that aligns with the OOP worldview and is fundamental to understanding one of its key ideas; this plus sign is caused by the finitude and the lack of human access to the objects’ executant inwardness or what Immanuel Kant refers to as the thing-in-itself. For Kant, objects live in a noumenal world where no human can access them completely. His doctrine, Transcendental Idealism, argues that while we can grasp particular facts about the world for-us (phenomena), we cannot know what form they must take prior to any experience (noumena). We cannot know what objects we encounter, but we can only know how we encounter them.
Harman borrows Kan’t idea of the thing-in-itself but rejects his correlationism [4]. For him, the reality is not simply a correlation between humans and the world outside of the mind but rather there is an outside for any object. Thus, the object is not merely a privilege retained only by humans. There is an inaccessible thing-in-itself in all objects and existence is not something that takes place in the relation between humans and the world. This way, any relation between any two objects translates them into a caricature or a distorted image regardless of any human participation. A bird translates a rock in the same way that a human being translates a rock. The quality of the two translations may be different, but it is a translation nonetheless. Real objects cannot relate directly, therefore cannot exhaust each other’s executant inwardness entirely. Objects’ real meaning withdraw from any interaction, hold their autonomy and independence from any relation, and reside in the mysterious noumenal realm. For Harman, objects, just like reality, are mysterious, weird, and alluring[5]. An object has indirect access to another object.
This is what Harman calls vicarious causation [6] and has roots in occasionalism[7] that reached prominence in the Islamic theological school of Iraq. Using Harman’s famous example, when a fire burns cotton, fire interacts with the caricature of the cotton and not the cotton-in-itself. As he asserts the idea of taking into account a mediator as the third entity that has causal monopoly in any relation between two objects was later applied by Descartes when he bequeathed the causal monopoly to God. For Descartes, there is a perfect God that plays an important role in any interaction between mind-body and human-world. Later, in his Transcendental Idealism doctrine, Immanuel Kant gave this role to human mind and the twelve categorical imperatives. For Harman, however, there is always a sensual mediator between two real objects in any relation. Here, it is important to talk briefly about Harman’s Fourfold structure which is a fundamental concept in understanding vicarious causation and how two real objects relate.
In The Quadruple Object, Harman presents his fourfold structure as the architecture of objects. The book illustrates how there are two types of objects as there are two types of qualities. This grouping creates four different categories that are the Real object (RO), the Sensual object (SO), as well as the Real qualities (RQ), and the Sensual qualities (SQ).
Unlike with the Empiricism of David Hume, and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, in which objects are simply a bundle of qualities and adumbrations, with no unity to which we adjust to thru habit, For Harman, there is a unified object that holds together the accidental, or even contradictory qualities and eidos of the object. Harman argues that the Sensual object (SO), which is his word choice for Husserl’s Immanent Intentional object, exists like “a box heavily adorned with gems and glitters.”[8] Like Husserl, Harman’s Sensual object has two kinds of qualities, the Sensual qualities (SQ) which differ from time to time and those which are accidental and arbitrary. These qualities can alter without changing the reality of the object. For instance, I can look at a table under different lights or paint its surface with new color but these changes would not alter the identity of the table. On the other hand, Real qualities, the eidos of object, are the ones that are essential for an object to maintain its identity, hold its autonomy, and remain distinguished from other objects. We have an identity that doesn’t change by any minor event that happens to me. I may look different from when I was 26 years old of age but my name has stayed the same regardless of all the events and experiences that I have gone through since then. I am the same person and have remained the same person throughout all these years though living my life has helped me to develop and realize some of my hidden potentialities. This consistency and steadiness of individuality are caused by the eidos of objects, the Real qualities that are transcendent and beyond human access. Unlike Husserl who believed we can only have access to the Real qualities by using his Eidetic reduction method, Harman believes neither practice nor theory can exhaust the reality of any objects. I cannot exhaust the essence of a table by simply putting my laptop on it nor thinking about it. Any relation between us and an object is a mere abstraction of the real object, allowing the real object to withdraw away from our senses.
Furthermore, in his tool-analysis, Heidegger argues that objects have two different modes. Ready-to-hand and Present-at-hand. When a carpenter is using a hammer to nail, the object, as equipment becomes a ready-to-hand, a somehow transparent object which disappears from the carpenter’s consciousness. However, the moment the hammer breaks its mode of being changes to present-at-hand. It penetrates into the sensual realm and becomes the carpenter’s Intentional object. for Harman, all objects, like Heidegger’s ready-to-hand object, are withdrawn in “a subterranean background of reality” while failing to actualize their potentialities entirely. This is a gloomy, dark, weird, and mysterious background where all objects reside beyond any direct access. Similar to Heidegger, the Harmanian’s withdrawal continues until the objects penetrate into the phenomenal realm, by breaking, calling for attention, or becoming present-at-hand. Heidegger believed that we simply take objects for granted instead of always being conscious of them. For him, objects always reside in the background until they pierce into our consciousness.
As you can see Heidegger’s ready-to-hand object and Husserl’s Intentional object are two different objects in two different realms. A Real object with its Real qualities (RO-RQ) without which there would not be different and distinguished Real objects but a giant real lump from which all objects come forward. Real objects and their Real qualities like Leibniz’s Monads live in a transcendent world beyond any access and cannot be identified. A Real object and its Sensual Qualities (RO-SQ) are explicitly detached and linked to each other indirectly thru allure. On the other hand, there is a Sensual object with its accidental Sensual qualities (SO-SQ) and a Sensual object and its Real qualities that are essential for the Sensual object to maintain its independence and remains the same object (SO-RQ). Consequently, we have the four permutations between RO, SO, RQ, and SQ are the roots for what Harman calls Time (SO-SQ), Space (RO-SQ), Essence (RO-RQ), and Eidos (SO-RQ).
Figure 1: The fourfold structure from The Quadruple Object, 2011.
I hope this brief description of Harman’s fourfold structure was helpful to become familiar with the basics of OOP, however, I must expound on the RO-SQ tension which is the root for space in which any interaction between two Real objects, and a Real object and its qualities takes place. For Harman, two Real objects cannot directly relate. Any interaction distorts the real object into a caricature or a translation of it and takes place in the sensual level or the phenomenal realm. But the questions here are to understand how two Real objects relate to each other in space? how the Real object has no contact with its sensual qualities and is attached to them through allure? And how space is not just the site of relation, but rather relation and non-relation?
It is crucial to revisit the ways in which Harman is integrating Heidegger’s tool-analysis with Husserl’s phenomenological approach toward objects. As I mentioned before, For Husserl, there is an Intentional object with two types of qualities. One that is accidental and the other one which he calls the Eidos of object. Change takes place on the SO-SQ tension “in time” but SO-RQ cannot change as any alteration on this pole will affect the object’s autonomy and individuality. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger believed not all objects are Intentional objects meaning the objects of our intention. They always reside in the dark background of reality without actualizing all of their potentialities thus they only become the Sensual object when we intend to relate to them or when they call for our attention. So, here, by synthesizing two approaches in knowing objects, Harman argues that there are two kinds of objects and not one. There is a Real object that is located in the darkness of reality with its yet unrealized and withdrawn potentialities and Real qualities that create distinctions between different Real objects. Then, there is a Sensual object as a translation, a caricature, or a distorted image of the wholeness of a Real object which is encrusted with Sensual qualities and submerged with Real qualities.[9] Like a box heavily adorn with gems and glitters, a Real object, like a human, interacts with the box through the accidental qualities that the Sensual object emanates.
“For OOP, the meaning of causation is not just that one entity affects another. Instead, causation is primarily a matter of composition”[10]. In any causal relation between two objects, a new real object emerges. This means a relationship between two objects, for example, a box and I, “is contained on the interior of our encounter, a new object inside which we both find ourselves.”[11]
In any interaction between two Real objects, one becomes a translation for the other and vice versa. Therefore, through a sensual mediator, I, as a real object, interact with the sensual box or distortion of that box while the real box withdraws and fails to actualize its executant inwardness entirely.
In conclusion, there is no direct access toward the explicit reality of a real object but an indirect and allusive one. This might sound radical but it has always been the case for humans and their access toward the great outside. As Harman reminds us, the word Philosophy comes from Greek word ?????????, philosophia, which means love of wisdom and not wisdom per se. What philosophers have done, so far, is to ask questions, seek knowledge, and allude to subject matters without concluding any concrete answers or definite endpoints as for reality is always out of reach. Just like in Plato’s Republic, Socrates never proposed a concrete answer to any question asked regarding Justice or virtue.
This is a crucial point made by Harman for this is the reason he argues that Aesthetics, by which he means hinting at reality in an indirect way without paraphrasing it, is the basis of philosophy and this is the reason for Harman to consider Philosophy and Art as closely related. They are not “a form of knowledge but a cognitive activity that does not communicate knowledge about its subject matter.”[12] Similar to a philosopher, what artist does is also to point out to a subject matter in an indirect and allusive manner and find the third table. Relatedly, one cannot paraphrase the work of an artist in neither literal terms nor its effects. Just like the third table that is a withdrawn Real object into the dark background of reality immune to undermining and overmining. Since we only have indirect access to a Real object, our options are limited to employ the right tools coping with them. Such tools that come from the potentiality of an indirect language such as metaphors, jokes, and threats where someone articulates a point without paraphrasing it directly.
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Notes
[1] “Elephant in the Dark”, Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks.
[2] Bryant, Democracy of Objects, 2011.
[3] Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge University Press, 1948.
[4] This is a term coined by Meillassoux which is “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. We will henceforth call correlationism any current of thought which maintains the unsurpassable character of the correlation so defined. Consequently, it becomes possible to say that every philosophy which disavows naïve realism has become a variant of correlationism.” (Meillassoux, After Finitude).
[5] Objects are things between their undermined and overmined versions; therefore, they cannot be paraphrased.
[6] When two entities influence one another only by meeting on the interior of a third, where they exist side-by-side until something happens that allows them to interact. Cf. Harman, “On Vicarious Causation”, 2017.
[7] The belief that God mediates and intervenes in any relation between two objects.
[8] Harman, The Quadruple Object, 2011.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Id, Speculative Realism: An Introduction.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Id, Object-Oriented Ontology: Theory of Everything.