Speculative Realism: An Introduction.

Spring 2007, London. Four philosophers - Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Ian Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman - gathered to discuss how to restore to philosophy the long-lost reality in itself. Some hoped for a mathematical understanding of reality or scientific images of the fading Universe, while others turned to radical interpretations of the classics of philosophy. In this discussion, speculative realism was born - a bold collective attempt to reclaim for philosophy its former dignity and the courage of speculative thought.

Speculative realism is not a single position, but a place for discussions and intellectual experiments among young philosophers. They united against a common opponent and risked contemplating the reality hidden from us behind the veil of finite human phenomena (language, culture, social and cognitive structures, flesh, etc.). To do what has been forbidden since Kant. «Speculative Realism: An Introduction» is an opportunity to find oneself at the center of the most interesting and ambitious attempt in recent decades to reclaim the future of philosophy.

Graham Harman, a leading theorist of object-oriented ontology (one of the versions of speculative realism), offers his perspective on speculative realism as a contentious whole, revealing the main positions, points of divergence, and the designations of the four branches of one of the most important movements in contemporary philosophy.