The Quadruple Object by Graham Harman
Author:Graham Harman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Methodology, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781846947001
Publisher: Zero Books
Published: 2011-07-15T02:15:02+00:00
C. The Asymmetry of Contact
A few words on asymmetry are now in order. Real objects cannot touch real objects, and in this respect Heidegger’s tool-analysis reawakens the occasionalist scenario. And sensual objects do not touch other sensual objects, but exist only as contiguous in a single experience that serves as their bridge. For this reason the only possible kind of direct contact is asymmetrical, with real objects touching the sensual objects that they experience. This contradicts the usual assumption that causal or relational contact is always symmetrical, always transitive. If a first object touches a second, then supposedly the second cannot avoid touching the first in return: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; look into the abyss and it looks back into you. But that is not what happens according to the model developed in this book. Instead, there is always just one real object involved in any interaction. If I perceive the tree, it can probably perceive me in turn. But this must occur as part of a different relation, not as the reverse side of the same one.
It is obvious that this direct contact between a real object and various sensual objects works differently from the sorts of “tensions” already described between objects and qualities. In such cases we noted the paradox that the object both has and does not have its qualities. A ripe apple must somehow have the ripeness, yet it remains the same apple both before and after the ripeness is attained, meaning that the apple maintains a certain distance from its own qualities. But the situation in which a real object touches a sensual one is different: here the contact is direct. The sensual horse, diamond, or maypole is directly before me, without need of mediators to enable us to touch. By contrast, the house I observe makes no direct contact with any of its own sensual profiles, for the simple reason that it is a sensual object and has accidents only for those who experience it. The house or dog we encounter is indifferent to all the shadows and angles and moods through which it appears to us. This yields a fascinating result. For so far, we have spoken only of the inability of real objects to touch, and hence of their need for mediators in order to exert force on one another. But now this also seems to be true of the four object-quality tensions as well. Perhaps even these tensions need bridges in order to relate in some way.
We now have a menagerie of interactions between various sorts of objects and qualities, one that risks boring or confusing the reader. A catalog is needed to make sense of the turmoil, just as the standard model of particle physics has since the early 1970s helped to make sense of the profusion of particles and forces in nature. The only form of direct contact we know so far is between the real object that experiences the world and the various sensual objects it encounters.
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