Really thought provoking post circling around the varied relationships between metaphysics and ethics HERE. I've posted my first thoughts in the discussion thread.
[Post by Bogost responding to the same thing that Levi is responding to HERE, with some characteristically great quips, e.g.
I've written about this before (in the Turtlenecked Hairshirt and in We Think in Public), but I almost always find intellectual appeals to "the world" and "the public" to be disingenuous. For one part, who are we, holed up like we are with our French theory and our espresso, to talk of being "political?" If it means incanting Foucault and Žižek at one another, then that's not politics. If it means blogging about injustice to a group of twenty friends and acquaintances, then that's not politics. If it means gasping about injustices at wine bars and gallery openings, than that's still not politics.
I'm not just picking on Vitale here; I think this is a sickness that runs throughout all of the humanities, and has done for many decades. Being "engaged with the wider world" is a virtue worthy of our aspiration. But I'd hardly describe critical theorists as having even the most basic of relationships with the wider world.
He goes on then concludes:
If that's politics, you can have it. I'll take frogs and Fiats for now, for communing with them is sure to make me more attuned to the diverse world of things—among them the Marxists, the evangelicals, and the cynics, among so many others.
Levi responds in the comment section, and has a longer response to Bogost HERE.
This is stuff that needs to be hashed out, and is directly related to the brouhaha about normativity a few days ago (I linked to the relevant posts by Levi, Reid Kane, and Pete Wolfendale HERE.
As is clear from my thoughts in the comment thread to Levi's initial post, I think there's a strong connection between Harman, Bryant, and Bogost's metaphysics and what is interesting and right about certain forms of Buddhism. Moreover, I think this follows from the way Harman recognizes the inconsistencies in Heidegger and crafts a consistent view from what's there. That is, Harman's non-Daseinocentric non-pragmatist analysis of Tool Being fits in really nicely with Heidegger's later post Japan ethical musings (and Adorno and Horkheimer's critiques of technology for that matter). Anyhow, in the response to Levi I work this out with reference to the standard Euthyphro type critique of hedonism.]
