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Mad Speculation and Absolute Inhumanism: Lovecraft, Ligotti, and the Weirding of Philosophy

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TitleMad Speculation and Absolute Inhumanism
SubtitleLovecraft, Ligotti, and the Weirding of Philosophy
ContributorBen Woodard(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0016.1.15
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/continent-year-1/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightWoodard, Ben
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2012-12-12
Long abstractI want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Miéville’s Iron Council which puts down track as it moves re-claiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant’s criti-cal philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant’s prohibition on specula-tive metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.”And while Alain Badiou would certainly be op-posed to the libidinal investments of Land’s Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant’s normative thought-bureaucracies:Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism – always asking Quid Juris?Or “Haven’t you crossed the limit?” – combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [...]. That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflec-tions on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism (La Folie dans la raison pure [Paris: Vrin, 1990]). I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it.
Page rangepp. 170–185
Print length16 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)