DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2020-1-5-13

On relations of objects in Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology

Georgiy G. Gaiko
Independent Researcher

Orel, 302028, Russia;
e-mail: dominiquesandrelli@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1771-6211

Alina A. Boyko
Senior Lecturer of the Department of Logic,
Philosophy and Methodology of Science

Orel State University named after I.S. Turgenev
95, Komsomolskaya st., Orel, 302026, Russia;
e-mail: al_iina@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5041-8654

The article aims to analyze the relations between objects in the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman. The authors consider Harman’s concept to be one of the main achievements of modern philosophy. This concept makes it possible to overcome the problem of objectivity as such and to gain access to the object uncorrelated by the subject of knowledge. Using the presented scheme of the object, the authors postulate the absence of the subject and subject-object relations based on correlations. Thus, the problem of objectivity is solved in a radical way. However, Harman’s object-oriented ontology does not explain how the relations between uncorrelated objects occur. It is essential to find the way to describe the mechanism of interaction between objects in which the object remains real, i.e. uncorrelated, and at the same time sensual, accessible for perception and interaction. That is why the authors turn to Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction. Its application to the analysis of relations between objects in Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology allows the authors to deabsolutize correlationism as the only possible way of relations between objects, and at the same time to preserve it as a way of interaction between objects. The nature of the relations between objects can be logically explained by the philosophy of Albert Camus, through combining his method of cognition with the principle of deconstruction. Using this method, the authors come to a conclusion that correlations necessarily arise when objects interact, which allows them to manifest themselves as accessible. However, the existence of objects by themselves takes place without correlations. They are a condition for the appearance of a sensory object, but they are not possible with the existence of real objects on their own. The method proposed shows that the relations of objects represent an inextricable duality of the sensual and the real object, which is manifested in their knowable-unknowable nature. Studying the nature of interaction between objects in Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology with the help of this method allows better understanding of the problem of objectivity as such. This issue requires further, more extensive, study and discussion.

Keywords: ontology, metaphysics, Graham Harman, object-oriented ontology, correlationism, speculative realism, nonduality, object, deconstruction, method, Jacques Derrida, philosophy, epistemology, relations.

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Received 29.10.2019

For citation:

Gaiko G.G., Boyko A.A. [On relations of objects in Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Filosofia. Psihologia. Sociologia [Perm University Herald. Philosophy. Psychology. Sociology], 2020, issue 1, pp. 5–13 (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2020-1-5-13