“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, May 8, 2011

Being, Acting, Thinking


I'm having a nice conversation with Moses Boudourides and Nick Srnicek on Twitter (it really is good for this sort of thing). Moses is wondering why we speculative types talk about the correlation between being and thinking, as opposed to the one between being and acting—I imagine he's referring to Meillassoux somewhat in that. I think he's also thinking about ANT (actor network theory). I'm perhaps not as Latourian as some so I won't speak to that.

Now for me the distinction between acting and thinking sounds like it's coming from a too human centered place. For me, there's not that much difference between holding a cup and thinking about a cup. In fact there's not much difference between a cup sitting on a table and me holding a cup—and therefore not that much difference between holding, thinking, and sitting. Not that much difference between a cup sitting on a table and me thinking about a cup.

Holding, sitting and thinking belong to the aesthetic dimension, that is, the causal realm. There is another realm: the realm of being. Objects of all kinds (me, the cup, the table) occupy both realms.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

sounds abrupt. holding a cup and thinking to hold one are not different? not if youre deprived of water for 48 hours :)

Timothy Morton said...

I agree with you. That's not the sense in which the distinction is made.