OOP Philosophers Do Not Live Hereaesthetics has an important role in my work for technical no less than temperamental reasons. The world is a set of polarisations in which the real exists in tension with the sensual and objects in tension with their qualities. Absolutely everything that exists, whether real or fictional, is dominated by these tensions. I've borrowed the mock term ‘ontography' from an M.R. James ghost story and turned it into a serious term for the systematic classification of these tensions. I call them time, space, essence and eidos, and place all four on an equal footing. There is also a special way in which each of these tensions breaks down, and I call them confrontation, allure, causation and theory. ‘Allure' is the realm of the aesthetic. It involves the tension between an absent real object and the sparkling surface qualities that seem to revolve around it while never quite belonging to it. For me this happens not only in art works, but in all experiences that involve any degree of shock or surprise. It would be interesting to compare and classify all the different forms of allure, and that's what I will do before long.
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