The Origins and Meaning of Speculative Realism: On the Problem of the New Ontologies Genesis

The formation of a new ontology is a complex multifactorial process. One of the leading factors contributing to the change of ontological paradigms, since the 16th and 17th centuries, is the development of science. Reflection over one or another historically established scientific picture of the world is a significant part of the content of ontological studies. Computer science plays a major role in the development of the postclassical scientific picture of the world. Its expansion into all areas of scientific knowledge turns it into meta-science. As a result, the world begins to be perceived through the prism of information technology as a big data entity. Such a world-view initiates new ontological studies. This is especially true for speculative realism. The status of speculative realism as a serious philosophical trend has been repeatedly questioned. This article aims to maximally approach the understanding of the origins and meaning of speculative realism and to help determine the place of this trend in the history of intellectual thought. Speculative realism can be seen as the “answer” to the “challenge” of the Anthropocene. However, in seeking this answer, speculative realism appeals to the principles of computer science. The impartial objectivism of computer science, in which the world is, first of all, the big data of existence, is extremely relevant to the main aspirations of speculative realists. The key ideas of speculative realism - separation from the principles of subjectivism, idealism, and anthropocentrism, and participation in the principles of objectivism, realism, and non-anthropocentrism - correlate with the basic scientific principles of computer science. Speculative realism can be seen as a modern version of positivism. Like Bacon's positivism, which is actualized as the antithesis of scholastic idealism, and like Comte's and Mill's positivism, which is actualized as the antithesis of the idealism of German classical philosophy, speculative realism is actualized as the antithesis of the anti-realism of philosophical thought in the second half of the twentieth century. The meaning of speculative realism seems to lie in realism, which acquires not only an ontological but also deontological status. It opposes both the position of modernist optimism, which defines a human as the owner of being, and the position of postmodern skepticism, which defines being as a chaotic process not subject to human understanding. The exhaustion of anti-realistic (correlationist) continental philosophy (existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, poststructuralism, analytic philosophy) and its counter productivity in the conditions of digitalization of being and the prolongation of the Anthropocene can be determined as the origins of speculative realism.

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