Politics of the Absolute: Hegel and Object Oriented Ontology (Excerpt)

Abstract

Within the last fifteen years there has been somewhat of a mini-renaissance of the philosophical concept of the absolute found in Quentin Meillassoux’s 2008 work After Finitude1 but also found in the Speculative Realism movement in general2. In this paper I will start by briefly describing the various mutations of this absolute in contemporary philosophy. I will then suggest some political implications associated with these notions of the absolute and then move onto an analysis of the absolute ‘whole’ (Hegel et’al) and the absolute (non-relative) independence of the discrete unit or individual object in the work of Graham Harman.