Right now, we are experiencing a new development within philosophy. It is the era of object oriented ontology. This essay will explore the nature of said development, and investigate and predict possible practical outcomes.
The main feature of object oriented ontology is its proposal of a new materialism [Negarestani, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im3ZH-S2sPg], that is based on a new post-phenomenological approach which I will outline in the following paragraph. Whereas the materialism of yesterday was based on distinctions of mind and matter, such that matter became the predominant precursor of everything [R. Guenon, The Reign of Quantity, p. 3], the new materialism approaches things based on an existentialist model; A Heideggerian model. This may seem contradictory in terms, but it is not. In fact this new ontological model can be approached as a post-phenomenological model.
In phenomenology, the Cartesian distinction between subject and matter is considered unnecessary (epoché in Husserl’s term), which means that the subject experiencing the object is in fact experiencing the object as part of himself, and vice versa. Heidegger, as Husserl’s student, developed this thesis, and introduced the now famous notion of Dasein [Being]. Being, whose existence, or ontology, precedes reality and imposes itself on everything, discovering its surroundings as elements (existentials in Heidegger’s words) of itself. This approach revolutionized social science in ‘left wing’ [Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze] – as well as ‘right wing’ cirles [Leo Strauss, Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye].
Foucault even proclaimed the end of the individual, and Deleuze introduced a new entity, ‘the rhizhome’ which dissolves the individual in order to overcome dichotomies between mind and matter [https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=rhizom]. Derrida argued that Levi-Strauss’ famous dichotomical approach to studying culture was based on the same ignorance as Descartes in reinventing new dichotomies over and over again [https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/12/vulgar-deconstruction?fbclid=IwAR3JYilTz8DEfSLRh8YJKZ2nze-UJX8Wc9zzR-G5xPLyUxND7-P3thQlN5I].
Moving forward to more recent days, there has been a development in these ideas, which has passed over most people’s ears, and even academics [In my personal experience at a large danish university, University of Southern Denmark, there has been no talk of object oriented ontology, and teachers shrug whenever it is mentioned]. This development involves a new generation of intellectuals that have developed the ideas of phenomenology to a step further than the likes of Foucault and Derrida etc.
Nick Land speaks of a ‘schizophrenic escape route’ from contemporary philosophy in the veins of Deleuze [On the very first page of Nick Land’s Fanged Noumena]. Even more radical, as the russian Traditionalist, Alexander Dugin has pointed out: authors such as Graham Harman argues for a radical deconstruction of Heideggerian terminology [http://www.4pt.su/en/content/how-world-things-will-replace-world-people-speculative-realism]. The new subject that Harman proposes is not a subject as in Dasein, but a new post-subject: a schizo-splitted entity that does not exist except in the surroundings it experiences. This is the proposal that Graham Harman and the other object-oriented objectivists proposes: a post-human entity that only lives through Heidegger’s existentials [ibid].
What this means is that human individuality and consciousness is cancelled and is instead replaced with a kind of slavery of Dasein; where Dasein is abolished and replaced with existentials.
In practical terms, we could imagine human beings literally enslaved and indoctrinated through education and media with the belief that they do not exist, while robots and other A.I. chimeras of artificial intelligence are ‘experienced’ by these humans thus giving them ‘life’ through this experience. What this means is, while the human does not believe it exist, it does believe the robot/A.I. chimera exists and thus grants it life. This is one possible practical implication of what the object-oriented ontological world looks like. We may also imagine a world where the before-mentioned ontology is introduced into legal- and educational programs, thus rendering this new system de facto reality, and anyone questioning this system will be labeled a criminal. So even if people retain their sanity, they may still punished through an increasingly authoritarian system.
These are only a few possible outcomes of this new openly Satanic philosophy (Negarestani is an open Iranian satanist) [https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/studio/inverted-world-threshold-demonic-reality].
In conclusion, materialism is not mere modern scientism but can, as illustrated above, also exist within a postmodern- and (post-)phenomenological paradigm. As Benoist illustrated, the neoliberalism of Hayek and his followers is completely compatible with this new posthuman materialism, as everything is reduced to the principle of the free market [https://blog.ignaciocarreraediciones.cl/contra-hayek-primera-parte-por-alain-de-benoist].