Raymond Brassier (born 1965) is a British
philosopher. He is member of the philosophy faculty at the
American University of Beirut,
Lebanon, known for his work in
philosophical realism
Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has ''mind-independent ex ...
. He was formerly Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at
Middlesex University
Middlesex University London (legally Middlesex University and abbreviated MDX) is a public research university in Hendon, northwest London, England. The name of the university is taken from its location within the historic county boundaries of ...
, London, England.
Brassier is the author of ''Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction'' and the translator of Alain Badiou's ''Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism'' and ''Theoretical Writings'' and Quentin Meillassoux's ''After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency''. He first attained prominence as a leading authority on the works of
François Laruelle
François Laruelle (; ; born 22 August 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly of the Collège international de philosophie and the University of Paris X: Nanterre. Laruelle has been publishing since the early 1970s and now has around twenty ...
.
Brassier is of mixed French-Scottish ancestry, and his family name is pronounced in the French manner.
Education
He received a
Bachelor of Arts degree from the
University of North London in 1995 and
Master of Arts and
Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the
University of Warwick
, mottoeng = Mind moves matter
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £7.0 million (2021)
, budget = £698.2 million (2020� ...
in 1997 and 2001 respectively.
Philosophical work
Along with
Quentin Meillassoux,
Graham Harman
Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is an American philosopher and academic. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the develop ...
, and
Iain Hamilton Grant, Brassier is one of the foremost philosophers of contemporary
speculative realism interested in providing a robust defence of
philosophical realism
Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has ''mind-independent ex ...
in the wake of the challenges posed to it by post-Kantian critical idealism, phenomenology, post-modernism, deconstruction, or, more broadly speaking, "
correlationism". Brassier is generally credited with coining the term ''speculative realism'', though Meillassoux had earlier used the phrase ''speculative materialism'' (french: matérialisme spéculatif) to refer to his own position.
Brassier himself, however, does not identify with the speculative realist movement, and, further, debates that there even is such a movement, stating:
Brassier is strongly critical of much of contemporary philosophy for what he regards as its attempt "to stave off the 'threat' of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning – characterized as the defining feature of human existence – from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment". According to Brassier, this tendency is exemplified above all by philosophers strongly influenced by
Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
and
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consider ...
. Unlike philosophers such as
John McDowell, who would press philosophy into service in an attempt to bring about a "re-enchantment of the world", Brassier's work aims to "push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion".
According to Brassier, "the disenchantment of the world understood as a consequence of the process whereby the Enlightenment shattered the '
great chain of being
The great chain of being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals and plants to minerals.
The great ...
' and defaced the 'book of the world' is a necessary consequence of the coruscating potency of reason, and hence an invigorating vector of intellectual discovery, rather than a calamitous diminishment".
[Brassier, Ray. ''Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction''.] "Philosophy", exhorts Brassier, "would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity."
Brassier's work attempts to fuse elements of post-war French philosophy with ideas arising from the (largely Anglo-American) traditions of
philosophical naturalism
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.
According to philosopher Steven Lockwood, naturalism can be separated into an ontological sense and a me ...
,
cognitive science, and
neurophilosophy
Neurophilosophy or philosophy of neuroscience is the interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores the relevance of neuroscientific studies to the arguments traditionally categorized as philosophy of mind. The philosophy of ...
. Thus, along with French philosophers such as
François Laruelle
François Laruelle (; ; born 22 August 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly of the Collège international de philosophie and the University of Paris X: Nanterre. Laruelle has been publishing since the early 1970s and now has around twenty ...
,
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gil ...
, and
Quentin Meillassoux, he is also heavily influenced by the likes of
Paul Churchland
Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland ros ...
,
Thomas Metzinger
Thomas Metzinger (born 12 March 1958) is a German philosopher and professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. , he is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, a co-founder of thG ...
and
Stephen Jay Gould. He also draws heavily, albeit often negatively, on the work of
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
,
Edmund Husserl, and
Martin Heidegger.
Brassier's work has often been associated with contemporary philosophies of nihilism and pessimism. In an interview ''
True Detective
''True Detective'' is an American anthology crime drama television series created and written by Nic Pizzolatto. The series, broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States, premiered on January 12, 2014. Each season of the s ...
'' creator and writer
Nic Pizzolatto gave he cited Brassier's ''Nihil Unbound'' as an influence on the TV series, along with
Thomas Ligotti
Thomas Ligotti (born July 9, 1953) is an American horror writer. His writings are rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have been described by critics as works of ''philosophical'' horror, often formed into ...
's ''
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race'', Jim Crawford's ''Confessions of an Antinatalist'',
Eugene Thacker
Eugene Thacker is an American philosopher, poet, and author. He is Professor of Media Studies at The New School in New York City. His writing is often associated with the philosophy of nihilism and Philosophical pessimism, pessimism. Thacker's b ...
's ''In The Dust of This Planet'', and
David Benatar
David Benatar (born 8 December 1966) is a South African philosopher, academic and author. He is best known for his advocacy of antinatalism in his book '' Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence'', in which he argues that ...
's ''
Better Never to Have Been''.
Bibliography
Books
*''Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction'' (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Book chapters
* Brassier, R. "Abolition and Aufhebung: Reply to Dimitra Kotouza" in ''What Is To Be Done Under Real Subsumption?'' (Berlin: Mute Books, 2020).
* Brassier, R. "Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines: Form and Function in A Thousand Plateaus" in ''A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
* Brassier, R. "Pratiques et processus: à propos du naturalisme" in ''Choses en soi. Métaphysique du réalisme'' (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2018).
* Brassier, R. "The Metaphysics of Sensation: Psychological Nominalism and the Reality of Consciousness" in ''Wilfrid Sellars, Idealism, and Realism: Understanding Psychological Nominalism'' (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
* Brassier, R. "Jameson on Making History Appear" in ''This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time'' (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 2017).
* Brassier, R. "Correlation, Speculation and the Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis" in ''The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux: Analytic and Continental Kantianism'' (Oxon: Routledge, 2017).
* Brassier, R. "Transcendental Realism" in ''The Kantian Catastrophe? Conversations on Finitude and the Limits of Philosophy'' (Newcastle: Bigg Books, 2017).
* Brassier, R. "Prometheanism and its Critics" in ''#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader'' (Falmouth & Berlin: Urbanomic & Merve Verlag, 2014).
* Brassier, R. "Nominalism, naturalism, and materialism: Sellars’s critical ontology" in ''Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and its Implications'' (Oxon: Routledge, 2013).
* Brassier, R. "Laruelle and the reality of abstraction" in ''Laruelle and Non-Philosophy'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
* Brassier, R. "Concepts, objects, gems" in ''Theory after 'Theory (New York: Routledge, 2011).
* Brassier, R. "Science" in ''Alain Badiou: Key Concepts'' (Oxon: Routledge, 2010).
* Brassier, R. and Robin, Mackay. "Nick Land: Fanged Noumena: Selected Writings 1987-2007" (Falmouth & New York: Urbanomic & Sequence Press, 2011).
* Brassier, R. "Concepts and Objects" in ''The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism'' (Melbourne: Re-Press, 2011).
* Brassier, R. and Christian, Kerslake. "The Origins and Ends of the Mind: Philosophical Essays on Psychoanalysis" (Leuven University Press, 2007).
* Brassier, R. and Alberto, Toscano. "Aleatory Rationalism" in ''Alain Badiou: Theoretical Writings'' (New York: Continuum Press, 2004).
* Brassier, R. and Alberto, Toscano. "Alain Badiou: Theoretical Writings" (New York: Continuum Press, 2004).
;Articles
"Wandering Abstraction."''Mute'' (2014)
"Transcendental Logic and True Representings."''Glass-bead'' (2016)
"Dialectics Between Suspicion and Trust."''Stasis'' (2017)
;As translator
* Alain Badiou, ''Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism'', transl. by Ray Brassier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
* Alain Badiou, ''Theoretical Writings'', transl. by Ray Brassier &
Alberto Toscano (New York: Continuum, 2004).
* Jean-Luc Nancy, "Philosophy without Conditions," transl. by Ray Brassier, collected in ''Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy'', ed.
Peter Hallward
Peter Hallward is a political philosopher, best known for his work on Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze. He has also published works on post-colonialism and contemporary Haiti. Hallward is a member of the editorial collective of the journal '' Radic ...
(Great Britain: MPG Books, 2004).
* Quentin Meillassoux, ''After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency'', transl. by Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2008).
References
External links
Faculty webpageat the American University of Beirut
Review of ''Nihil Unbound'' in ''New Humanist''Axiomatic Heresy: The Non-Philosophy of Francois Laruelle''Radical Philosophy''
121, Sep/Oct 2003. p. 25
Webpage for ''Collapse'' journal featuring contributions by Ray Brassier and other "speculative realists"
Ray Brassier interviewed by Marcin Rychter "KRONOS"
* Catherine Malabou
Catherine Malabou (; born 1959) is a French philosopher. She is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, at the European Graduate School, and in the departmen ...
's tal
''It Does Not Have to Be Like This''
(On Meillassoux and Contingency) from the Forum for European Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...
, September 2012 (MP3)
''Contemporary Readings of Hegel''
at The New Centre for Research & Practice (YouTube)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brassier, Ray
1965 births
Living people
21st-century British philosophers
American University of Beirut faculty
Continental philosophers
French–English translators
Materialism
Metaphysicians
Philosophers of nihilism
Philosophical realism
Translators of philosophy
21st-century translators
Noise musicians
Industrial musicians
Heidegger scholars
Nihilists
Postmodernists