Speculative Realism as a Project of a New Piety

The article explores the ideas of the speculative realism of Graham Harman and Quentm Meillassoux and shows their connection with the phenomenon of a new piety. For the philosophy of the 20th century, which can be attributed to a new apophaticism, is characterized by an interest in the unspeakable, inexpressible, impossible, which does not belong to the order of existence and is not articulated in language. Unlike traditional apophatic knowledge, the unspoken is justified anthropologically, not theologically, in this case. Speculative realism shifts its interest in the untold beyond God and human. The result is Harman's theory of incomprehensible objects and Meillassoux's concept of the absolute, which can be combined under the title of a new piety. This raises the questions of how speculative realism conceptually justifies piety and what raises modern philosophy's interest in piety. Analyzing Harman, the author shows that the postulated discrepancy of the object with itself and the extrapolation of the problem of intentionality, perception, thing-in-itself on the world of objects are based on intellectual substitution. On the one hand, this extrapolation allows Harman to talk about the "inner life" of objects, their "caricature" perception of other objects. On the other hand, Harman reduces the problem of perception and "translation" to the problem of the arrangement of things in space and the interaction of their properties. The author pays special attention to Harman's use of arguments from Islamic and Christian mysticism. She shows that these arguments are not legitimate, because mysticism speaks about the ineffectiveness of God in relation to the human mind, and not about the mutual inex-pressiveness of things. Exploring Meillassoux, the author shows that his task is to empty the concept of the absolute in order to get rid of two figures in philosophy: human and God. Meillassoux frees being and the thought of being from connection with human, and God from the need to be. Meillassoux's non-metaphysical non-religious absolute is incomprehensible. Its incomprehensibility is not related to the level of knowledge, but follows from its baselessness. Meillassoux appeals to a world devoid of totality, referring to Cantor's mathematical set theory. The incomprehensibility of the world is derived from the irreducibility to the One and is in no way connected with the ontological mystery and infinity. The author concludes that the phenomenon of piety, which Meillassoux associates with the effect of correlationism and the problem of unreliability, includes the very philosophy of Meillassoux. The absolute in the absence of totality cannot be given to anyone, not even to oneself. Knowledge about it is divinatory. As a result, the author clarifies that the essence of the new piety lies in the total superstition in a world in which nothing can be said for sure. Paradoxically, its bearer is the inhuman. The author concludes that the speculative philosophy of the incomprehensible is a way of confronting anthro-pocentrism.

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