Note: Originally published as part of The Significant Event series in 2014, this essay has been revised and expanded for 2026. The text below preserves the original line of inquiry while extending its implications for Mental Health Philosophy and contemporary discussions of Speculative Realism. – Read the original 2014 post here.
Hard Correlationalism is the central issue examined in this essay, as it relates to Mental Health Philosophy, Speculative Realism, and Quentin Meillassoux.
What is the relationship between philosophy, Correlationalism, and mental health?
In posts earlier than 2014 I discussed a notion a friend came up with, the “Pocket Veto”. Some 10 years I thought it was an interesting notion which to me was indicating something significant about the philosophical subject and what I had ventured out upon to call The Significant Event. This kind of event would be the basis of by book The Moment of Decisive Significance.
The Pocket Veto and the Significant Event
I’m reaching out to my friend to write a post about what he was thinking about this ‘pocket veto’. There is something nifty about pondering how we might all always carry a sort of existential pocket veto with us. Like, when we encounter the contradiction between what I think I am and what the universe shows me (as we can never but be involved with it at all times) I tend to immediately pull out of my pocket a “veto” from the ruling of the ‘house-universe’ — as though I am the president and the universe is congress.
Mental Health Philosophy and the Question of Experience
The original post was way before being a counselor was on my radar, and at the time I never had any sort of care about mental health specifically; at least, I didn’t know to call it mental health.
Now I say mental health specifically concerns the experiential juncture of knowing knowledge when we are faced with a problem, any problem. My notice is that typically people do not intentionally engage with the issue, but instead pull out their pocket veto, and from then on to live a life of ideas, their assertions, and the repercussions of that choice. I say that mental health has to do with the repercussions of the decision that was not made, as I say, the decision that could not be made..I call the elaboration and descriptions of that decision Mental Health Philosophy
This post is more about the strict philosophical sorting than it is specifically mental health, however. We are dealing here more squarely with the ancestral conditions of mental health, which is to say, that which constitutes the thing itself that we will eventually call mental health.
Hard Correlationalism: Quentin Meillassoux and the Ancestral Object
In coming across in our experience the significant even and the pocket veto, here, we move to consider Quentin Meillassoux (going forward QM ) and the ideas presented in his book “Beyond Finitude”.
Meillassoux’s argument arrives through the question:
When modern science, or the mathematization of the world, had taken hold, [what he identifies as the Copernican Revolution], why did philosophy move away from its announcement, which is to say, away from, as QM puts it, “thought’s capacity to think what there is whether thought exists or not” (pg 166, Beyond Finitude).
This is really to question thought itself, but he stays with his problem of why philosophy did not move toward this, as he terms, ancestral object, where knowledge conforms to the object, and instead move toward the object conforming to knowledge.
His thesis concerns more a proper manner of thinking, and this concerns removing metaphysical thinking, thinking that involves a transcendental element or aspect, what QM frames more as that which derives from a ‘necessitarian probabilistic thinking’, so to speak. See here that I am not trying to reproduce his exact argument as much as I am framing what must be the case if indeed his argument has definition meaning; he is saying something about the fact that he must frame his point in a particular way, which goes to the difficulty that he is trying to show which then might indicate the point of his argument. Nonetheless, such thought (the necessity of probable states) stems from the notion that the probability of reality manifesting in just the way it is for any moment is extremely low, nearly impossible, and so in as much as reality does indeed manifest in such a way —that indeed there is no argument that can surmount to contain the moment as it is arising in must this way —it therefore can only be necessary due to a transcending element or aspect that has determined the outcome against this highly improbable outcome. Indeed, he is arguing necessity over contingency, but necessity in its absolute form that does not arise due to contingency. His book resonates this theme: after what is finite.
Fidelity, Experience, and the Point of Contention
This proposal I agree with, but not because he has successfully made his argument. I agree with him because the only way that I could be understanding to thus be agreeing with his point is to have already (beforehand) encountered it, which is to say, after the definition has been posed. He has, in short, validated experience because he has expressed the truth. There is no other way to say it and still have fidelity to what the words must be communicating on the whole; interestingly enough, his mentor, Alain Badiou, wrote about fidelity. In modern terminology, we call this phenomenon subjective, and elaboration upon this situation reveals that the problems that subjectivity poses by its method thereby indicate the object, which is to say, the condition or conditions that exist before the subject gets a hold of it.
I appreciate how he has voiced this situation because it quite aptly describes the issue, the pivotal discernment, the axial moment in the discussion of ideas put forth by authors of philosophy that I have called ‘the point of contention’, which lays out the divergent path as a necessary outcome of the motion of conventional discursive method. In the end, it thereby involves unilateral duality in contrast to — what I believe is called — a bilateral unity.
Conventional Philosophy and Nonphilosophy, and Kant
What I am calling conventional, in this way, is only marginally (probably) different than his existential phenomenalism which he is calling out as the necessity of probable states. The axial, or point of contention, is Nonphilosphical in the way of Francois Laruelle, that is the point which lays out the epistemological paths by which orientation becomes pronounced, unilaterally dual and bilaterally unified.
Where QM and I differ has do with his assertion of proper thinking, a proper method by which to suggest a ‘more proper’ method, what people might associate with a philosophical canon of terminology, or, the official academic argument that he is making and the laying out of terms defined in the specific way that he did. Oddly, because the generally object-Realist school that he tends to represent, the reason why I disagree with him is the same problem that is evidenced with Immanuel Kant, and indeed I would say that he is offering little more than Kant in this respect (with respect to the conventional method). Due to the appropriation of conventional knowledge that uses Kant’s ideas as previously stated, i.e., the argument that was there before I assessed and judged it, and thus the already posited object to be considered that has been and is to be built upon as progress in the effort for the truth of conventional philosophy, one could see that a more pronounced move should indeed be indicated; this in so much as the synthetic a priori, the categorical imperative, and Kant’s theses did little more than arouse suspicion and debate.
QM is keen to understand perhaps not only why anyone should, but also how to develop a move that would emphasize or reiterate what Kant was really trying to propose. Yet the impetus for the reiteration must then also have allowed QM to see that the fault of Kant’s force lay in his (Kant’s, but also ironically QM’s) reckoning of his (Kant’s) notion by a One reality that an insistence upon a universal ethics reveals. So it is that while QM may indeed notice the categorical error implicit certain readings of Kant to thereby be motivated to such a new turn (aka speculative realism) his also may be thwarted by this same problem of Kant. To wit; Kant suggests that the categorical imperative may imply a ‘right action’ of sorts, an ethical (good) action, that distinguishes then in relief what actions may be questionable, and thus he resorts the real ubiquitous power of choice by which the total and universal absolute manifestation of humanity exists: decision.
QM’s how and why run into issues, for which, he quickly discovers, no apology exists for, no argument that can justify what is says, which is the basis of the issue of facticity as well as the ancestral object; Badiou might agree, since fidelity is lost while at the same time upheld. So it is even in the most precise articulation of the case the fidelity to the one is given up for the multiple in the event, what I call the significant event, which is the moment of decisive significance.
There is a distinction that is indeed being discerned with the upholding of fidelity that the event marks, and in this distinction, we may (are justified) thereby tend to not forgive QM, for it is the statement of Kant that should by now have arrived with the question that is relieved of such universality. This is to say that where Badiou occupies the strong point of the human situation remanning within the modern subject, and Francois Laruelle the strong position at the end of the subject, QM himself makes the weak move by indicting reason, albeit a particular kind of reasoning, as the issue at hand. Granted that their works are now some 15 years old! I take up the banner once again to note this more recently in distinguishing a difference between Reason as ideological justification (apology) and reason as the essential quality with which human can be (existence), which hopefully helps where they all simply noted the possibility by giving it up, Badiou by explicitly saying this is what must be done, Laruelle by saying it is but a “non-standard” philosophy, and QM against the onslaught accusations of contradiction of by quietly sneaking back into the comfortably academic cave and backtracking into the more conventionally Realist position. (This is ironically why we can, nonetheless, forgive QM for his equivocation, and is simultaneously why mental health is never a backpedaling.)
Thought, Reason, and Meillassoux’s Contradiction
QM’s approach is upon how such an object antecedent to thought proposes likewise a condition of thought, an elementary and necessary condition of the reality for which he is arguing a new propriety, i.e. ‘reason’ — but if there is a thing in its own right antecedent to thought, what does this say of thought? Thus it is interesting that his critique is held out away from itself; where if there is an aspect that informs human thinking that exists independent of thought, and presumably QM is moving in that direction, then thought itself is brought into question; but QM invokes ‘reason’. His move is toward an imminence of thinking that should properly be understood as stemming from mathematical truth, removed from the transcendental tendency for thought that arrives by the opposite move. Yet QM leaves untouched the question of thought and instead approaches from an effect of thought, that reason, and not thought, is an ideological construction formed out of a historical misconstruing of information that he identifies as a ‘necessitarian probability’. Yet, ironically, as he proposes that the fault of reason is due to this necessary probability that surmises a unitary discourse, he is nevertheless proposing that a unitary discourse may be arrived at through a discarding of the transcendental reason in favor of a more mathematical basis. His can be taken as little more than another conventional assertion, another argument to be considered, and yet his indicts such reason as a particular incorrect reasoning.
Why Speculative Realism Ultimately Fails While Remaing Relevant
The short of his Correlationalism is a contradiction, and his attempt it to somehow get inside of the correlation but he cannot. So it is his After Finitude is a report in this limitation and what must be the case if indeed the limit is absolute, which is really just an equivocation. His move makes very explicit the rejection of the correlationalist dictate that would reduce thoughts’ “capacity to think what there is whether or not thought was there to think it” to the thought itself, and thereby posits objects that are not transcendental in their nature — or maybe more precisely, exactly transcendent, which is to say, to the correlationalism that would reduce all posited antecedents to the, what he calls, facticity of thought. In other words, we might see that where correlationalism reduces all that is to what can be thought in the moment (what I say is the real condition of knowledge) such correlative reality instead thus evidences the limit of knowledge and not the impossibility that anything more exists.
It is here that his argument begins to fail, not because it lacks argumentative or academic rigor, but because of the way that he is oriented upon what is happening. Interestingly enough, and with no disrespect to his colleagues and peers Ray Brassier and Levi Bryant, one could get very real by pointing out that despite the argumentation, they missed something in the fact of the authors’ reported experiences in the argument. How ironic is that! That the supposition of the authors is that they are investing is a type of intellectual engagement where the thought and being are correlated is understood as a problem to be overcome somehow! Indeed Mark Fisher promoted a philosophy about mental health which, basically, argues (without any irony) the point about the difference between the philosophy and the reality of experience, suggesting that it was due to a situation where mental health is not politicized enough; indeed, Badiou might have been proud and strangely confounded in his advocation of being politically effective by refusing to engage with politics! One could argue it is not the lack of politization but that mental health itself ,the facticity of mental health, concerns how one is oriented in knowledge, and not how one argues what should be the case. This kind of failure I elaborate upon through my work in mental health, which I do not go into here, except that I am giving the example of the failure, just as QM attempts to speak of the conditions that must be met if the failure is absolute, i.e., no example can be given without enacting a contradiction, or without existing as a non sequitur. It is a large and blatant irony that the lived experiencing a non sequitur in contrast to merely recognizing it cognitively and intellectually, cold amount to the mental issue of being depressed.
The issue that The speculative Realists (and I would argue, every significant philosophical proposal) come upon is that the argument is supposedly touching or addressing something that is actually there, but typically, in the usual manner that we attempt to speak about something, the things is never found, and yet we continue to argue over it, how to find it, what it is, and so on. It inevitably leads one to realize that we are merely talking about what we are talking about, and then, as the New Materialists (a whole nother sect) set upon, that the talking is actually the thing itself, that the material is the talking is the universe.
While this is the same issue that Kant dug up and exposed, the Speculative Realists work purportedly exposes that what was exposed is missed or had been buried again —which is where my essay, and Mental Health Philosophy begins, because the academic discussions function in a domain, through an orientation upon things that is only part of what is occurring. The inability to notice this can have repercussions that become exceedingly difficult to reconcile if there is only One knowledge and nothing on the other side (see Laruelle for how the difficulty actually appears in the One route), or objects that only reveal themselves by giving a partial intention while withdrawing (see Graham Harman’s work).
Mental Health, Emotion, and Reality: the Modern World Together
But I diverge…
Beyond Kant: The Question of Thought Itself
QM’s is supposedly not a Kantian intuition that relays the object in-itself to knowledge through a transcendent effector that then calls for an elaboration on what is true of metaphysics. Rather, he is proposing a proper basis of method for metaphysical speculation. Strangely enough, though, it is the opening by which we need not any longer rely upon a Hegelian History (sublation, and all that), an opening where the nature of the object in-itself may be identified without a need of a transcendent interlocutor, which is for real terms, real situations and thus current modern philosophy, a real Historical Consciousness denied as such due to the investment in the potential term-object identity that has gone beyond Hegel. Thus, it is not so much that anything may exist independent of thought — this is the oriented move indicated of the Speculative Realists — but rather more that the corresponding question has to do with the discourse from which derives the deviation and thus the question — not of reason as QM proposes, but of thought itself, which is then to pronounce the counter-partial aphilosophical move, namely, that only chaos exists and there is no reason why reason should be curating any sort of reality that we could rely upon.
Slavoj Zizek calls this a catastrophe. For there is never a mathematical conception that can avoid putting its use for humanity into terms, which is discourse, and apprehension of discourse cannot avoid a transcending effect (see my earlier posts). Real discourse always involves transcendence, even for atheists; the move he wishes to make, though, seems more inline with developing a ‘correctly fashioned’ discourse, one that will align thought with a real-true universe, which is, ultimately, a unitary discourse of the real, a discourse that only gains its footing through an assertion of a State of Reality, again, as in the previous segment (2014, part 3), a revolt from the limit back into the limit. And again, I say it is no wonder that QM and others must call their brand of Realism ‘speculative’; at least there is an appearance of an effort for humility (at the time, some rebuttals pointed to a large presumptive arrogance of these philosophers in their supposition that they had access to things outside of discourse and that some rebuttal didn’t deserve reply).
Hence the deviant move that corresponds counter-partially to Speculative Realism is the one that says the issue concerns what is not real, the move that brings thought itself into question, which is more consistent with Meillassoux’s pronunciation of the problem than he seems to be able to admit. Indeed, math appears to exist and its functions manifest despite what we may think of it, and it thereby argues an existence apart from thought that does not fall pray to the all-encompassing correlational position. But then, what seems to occur is a necessity that shows math does not get ‘discovered’ by our thinking, we do not ‘solve’ mathematical problems; rather, math is presenting itself or ‘is presented’ by its solutions to us —not given to problem solving but there ‘in front of’ the solution— in the only manner that is able to be presented, which then argues that the ‘thoughts’ that solve mathematical problems are determined, and not truly based in some sort of free, intuitive, inspirational or imaginative agency, which is to say, are not based in any sort of contingency. At best, it would seem QM is saying that we should limit types of thinking that are allowed to be counted as true, which appears then to fall on the weak side of Badiou’s thesis of ‘Being and Event’, yet weighing in on his truth procedures.
Mathematics, Reason, and the Limits of Argument
For what are we really saying when we make an argument? We are saying that the route by which such an argument was made is true in its facticity, its fact of it being an argument as a series, that because of the trueness of the fact that such arguments were made, this argument is likewise true but also more true; the argument that is being made is that it is a furthering of the progressive movement of historical argument, that indeed this argument I am presenting to you now argues that it makes the next step in the progress toward the truth of humanity in reality. Kierkegaard’s contemporary philosopher notices this motion as ironic; the modern philosopher views it as a problem which must be solved.
There is a problem here, therefore, then also, with QMs proposal. He is not suggesting a particular type of reasoning or manner of argument is to blame, rather, he is indicting a type of reason, a particular manifestation of thinking. He is not talking about operations of reason as reason might be a foundation upon which to make various arguments; no. He categorizes the problem as reason itself. So then how is it possible that an argument has been made upon the historical content that is argument where this furthest consequential proposal enjoins the facticity of progress in order to thereby argue that the facticity of the series is or was based upon an incorrect manner of proposing argument? It would seem by virtue of the argument QM is making that he would not only have to understand the previous proposals through that very faulty reason but then also understand that the manner by which he comes upon this furthest argument is significantly different than his (arch-fossil) predecessors; in other words, it would seem to have to be that the argument that he makes was not made upon the proposals of those before him, but rather his argument was presented intact, and the previous authors are merely vehicles for that presentation. What we have here then is a marker of the significant event in play, and an indication of the veto. In Mental Health Philosophy, I take that back to its inevitable beginning: Reason, by its very act, is at odds with reason itself, and this must be the thing itself.
Being and Space: The Physics of Phenomenology
Graham Harman, Thought, and Human Facticity
This is the reason why I bring the issue to thought itself. Graham Harman (Object Oriented Ontology) can be brought back in here. We are dealing not with objects of thought, for this way of viewing objects we are discussing, this orientation upon objects, does not exclude in a manner shown above, which quietly and subtly deceives by leaving the intuition of the transcendent as an element outside the speaking of issues; irony indeed is at play here, at all times. We are dealing with and addressing the facticity of being human in the world, and thereby reducing all possibility of addressing to a matter of objects, and thought is another of these objects.
The reason QM does not bring his discussion to thought (arguably) is because he sees that there is some form or aspect of his ability to bring argument that has been inspired to be able to view reality significantly different than the philosophers that he is presented with; this form is thus excluded from the giving of the system or scheme of meaningful objects, and this excluded element is exactly absolute transcendence. Hence, since transcendence is excluded by the parameters of his defined proposal, he is instead arguing a divergence based in the possibility of elements or aspects that are antecedent to thought, objects that exist despite whether thought is there to think them. And, because the transcendent is de facto another object as soon as we speak about it, which is to say, terms are objects, this undisclosed object, the transcendent interlocutor, the significant experience of such element —to use Rudolf Otto’s notions from earlier in this essay (2014, part 1) of filling in the cognitive gap which arises in the “awesome” experiential mystery— is frankly excluded. On the other hand, I posit there are no exclusions here (see Laruelle: there are no illusions) and thereby delineate that the significant issue has to do with discourse’s limitation and to bring in now Jean-Paul Lyotard to the rejoinder: How does one speak of the significant event?
Lyotard, Aquinas, and the Speculative Tradition
Meillassoux solves Lyotard’s problem by the conventional route, i.e. by falling back into what QM called the ‘hard’ correlational limit, that is, by intuition, but a particularized inspired intuition of the transcendent, the point at which such a division was come upon by him. In other words, he is following a distinction noticed as far back as Aquinas:
“Theoreticus sive speculativus intellectus in hoc proprie ab operativo sive practico distinguitur, quod speculativus habet pro fine veritatem quam considerat, practicus autem veritatem consideratam ordinat in operationem tamquam in finem.”
{Theoretical or speculative intellect is properly distinguished from the operative or practical, that the speculative has for its end the truth that it contemplates, the practical truth, however, orders the considered operation as its end. – Translation Google}
He is thus dealing squarely with the ‘speculative’ (surprising, huh?), yet in an odd sort of way he thus is also dealing with conventional reality, attempting to pose a solution to the problems evident of it by its philosophical discursive formulations, but without investigating that by which such formulations are made (the political world is given, essential and absolute). Further, in so relying upon such prior ground, and its assumption of progress, his statement represents a kind of ‘false ego’, a ‘bad faith’, for being invested in the division of labor that sees his ability not only granted by the history before him through true objects, for a term, but likewise upon a hierarchical structure of true forms, where his position is seen (argued) as highest. And further, though he may understand certain things of Aquinas’s ‘practical’, his statement evidences an assertion of Truth (albeit speculative) that does not require an explanation of his footing, but assumes it due to the commonly understood division of labor, but also the character of the common human being in reality and its ability to conspire with or be inspired by the transcendent that informs all things as to its necessary progress; ironically this then amounts to an ancestral object. He is proposing a route to Truth based upon a foundation that is inherently unstable, indeed, fantastical in its bearings, which is to say, upon a faith in the common One conventional reality.
Revolution, Consciousness, and Mental Health Philosophy
Such conventional assertions, admittedly of reality, as I have said, bring solutions only of the type that deal with momentary present social situations and thus require the appropriate ‘revolutionary act’ of Marx that reality demands. Thus the bridge that ones such as Slavoj Zizek or even maybe Angela Davis cross.
The issue then concerns not so much the revolutionary act, for such an act is required at all times; rather it is the feature of human consciousness that sees such an act as necessitating some posterior (of real experience) transformation, some intuition, that thereby evidences a prior (informed, given) separation of the human being from the world — as if ‘contemplation’ is withdrawn from the revolutionary act.
It is thereby Meissaloux’s work becomes an instrumental occasion to discuss the pocket veto, the significant event, and specifically but in general the human being in reality.
Conclusion: Mental Health Philosophy Beyond Correlationalism
And to bring this all present, Mental Health Philosophy accepts all these argumentative components and aspects as existing in the universe, manifest by the order and fact that they must be dealt with as elements of the issue, de facto, beyond argument. This thus meets the criteria of not only facticity but of ancetrality, but without the subsequent requirement to justify such notions to a transcendent, a priori, standard of Reason. This is because in the lived experience, by including all the necessary components, we find what is merely working, what is sufficient for the categories to be efficiently functioning currently. Mental health is that which arises due to an imperative within the knowing experience which demands the though reconcile with the existing thought cycle-pattern, what in psychology we call phenomenology, which is the object by which QM and Speculative Realism in general found as their object.
The only difference now is that they were unable to reconcile their notions with the fact of living them, as though, often enough, their ideas lacked the power to actually encounter the thing itself, and so ultimately due to forces outside of their control, outside of the subjective domain, i.e., phenomenological domain, they had to recourse back into the Kantian imperative.
Mental Health Philosophy, by virtue of mental health itself, what we say about it, and what we do with it, does not always enact such a requirement.
Further Reading
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Translated by Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum, 2005.
Brassier, Ray. Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.
Harman, Graham. Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Chicago: Open Court, 2002.
Kair, Lance. The Moment of Decisive Significance. Realization Press, 2018.
Kair, Lance. The Significant Event. Blog series, 2014-2026.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Laruelle, François. Principles of Non-Philosophy. Translated by Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers, 1970.
Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Translated by Ray Brassier. London: Continuum, 2008.
Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso, 1999.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.
You are mattering.