“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


Saturday, July 9, 2011

Harman's Review of Bennett


It's a very nice review (get it here), not dissimilar to mine (which will take a while to appear in print, in Theory, Culture and Society). Interestingly Graham includes quite a lot more detail than mine, on the later chapters, while mine looks slightly more broadly at the first two. Our conclusions are naturally much the same.

The takeaway line: we are entering a new age of metaphysics. That and the potato chips...

1 comment:

Christopher Dempsey said...

Interesting review of Bennett by Harman.

I too enjoyed Bennett very much; the deft and sure touch was particularly appreciated, and her ability, as Harman says, to "spin...philosophical gold out of everyday wool".

I agree with Bennett; the elan vital has shades of 'there but for the grace of God go I' (I will never know the reason I am me and not the clay that makes up my coffee mug), but given this, it behooves us to never assume the transcendent position over and above other things.

Harman's contrast of Bennett with OOO is interesting and one worth consideration; do I in fact share anything with the 'thing-in-itself-coffe mug'? I suspect I do, but I could be mis-interpreting OOO.