Ray Brassier | |
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| Born | Raymond Brassier (1965-12-22)22 December 1965 (age 59) London, England |
| Education | |
| Education |
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| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy Speculative realism (transcendental nihilism) |
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| Main interests | Nihilism,realism,materialism,methodological naturalism,antihumanism,Marxism |
| Notable ideas | Transcendental nihilism, philosophy as the "organon of extinction"[1] |
Raymond Brassier (/brəˈsɪər/;[2] born 22 December 1965) is a Britishphilosopher. He is a member of the philosophy faculty at theAmerican University of Beirut,Lebanon, known for his work inphilosophical realism. He was formerly Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy atMiddlesex University, London, England.
Brassier is the author ofNihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction and the translator ofAlain Badiou'sSaint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism andTheoretical Writings andQuentin Meillassoux'sAfter Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. He first attained prominence as a leading authority on the works ofFrançois Laruelle.[citation needed]
More recently Brassier has engaged withMarxism and the work of the German-American political theoristPaul Mattick.[3] In August 2024, it was announced that Brassier would be joiningKyung Hee University as a visiting professor in the Department of British & American Language and Culture, and in 2025 teach a masters course on Marxism andliterature with the British theorist and filmmakerJason Barker.[4]
Brassier is of mixed French-Scottish ancestry.[citation needed]
He received aBachelor of Arts degree from theUniversity of North London in 1995 andMaster of Arts andDoctor of Philosophy degrees from theUniversity of Warwick in 1997 and 2001 respectively.[5]
Along withQuentin Meillassoux,Graham Harman, andIain Hamilton Grant, Brassier is one of the foremost philosophers of contemporaryspeculative realism interested in providing a robust defence ofphilosophical realism in the wake of the challenges posed to it by post-Kantian critical idealism, phenomenology, post-modernism, deconstruction, or, more broadly speaking, what they refer to as "correlationism". Brassier is generally credited with coining the termspeculative realism, though Meillassoux had earlier used the phrasespeculative materialism (French:matérialisme spéculatif) to refer to his own position.
Brassier himself, however, does not identify with the speculative realist movement, and, further, disputes that there even is such a movement, stating:
The "speculative realist movement" exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever:actor–network theory spiced withpan-psychist metaphysics and morsels ofprocess philosophy. I don't believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students. I agree with Deleuze's remark that ultimately the most basic task of philosophy is to impede stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in a "movement" whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity.[6]
Brassier is strongly critical of much of contemporary philosophy for what he regards as its attempt "to stave off the 'threat' of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning – characterized as the defining feature of human existence – from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment". According to Brassier, this tendency is exemplified above all by philosophers strongly influenced byHeidegger andWittgenstein. Unlike philosophers such asJohn McDowell, who would press philosophy into service in an attempt to bring about a "re-enchantment of the world", Brassier's work aims to "push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion".
According to Brassier, "the disenchantment of the world understood as a consequence of the process whereby the Enlightenment shattered the 'great chain of being' and defaced the 'book of the world' is a necessary consequence of the coruscating potency of reason, and hence an invigorating vector of intellectual discovery, rather than a calamitous diminishment".[7] "Philosophy", exhorts Brassier, "would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity."[7]
Brassier's work attempts to fuse elements of post-war French philosophy with ideas arising from the (largely Anglo-American) traditions ofphilosophical naturalism,cognitive science, andneurophilosophy. Thus, along with French philosophers such asFrançois Laruelle,Alain Badiou, andQuentin Meillassoux, he is also heavily influenced by the likes ofPaul Churchland,Thomas Metzinger andStephen Jay Gould. He also draws heavily, albeit often negatively, on the work ofGilles Deleuze,Edmund Husserl, andMartin Heidegger.
Brassier's work has often been associated with contemporary philosophies of nihilism and pessimism. In an interviewTrue Detective creator and writerNic Pizzolatto gave he cited Brassier'sNihil Unbound as an influence on the TV series, along withThomas Ligotti'sThe Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Jim Crawford'sConfessions of an Antinatalist,Eugene Thacker'sIn The Dust of This Planet, andDavid Benatar'sBetter Never to Have Been.[8]
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