The Voice of the Outside: Can Philosophy Speak for the Inhuman?

In 2007, 17 years ago, a significant philosophical conference was held at Goldsmiths University in London. This conference marked the beginning of a new philosophical movement - speculative realism, which was originally formulated by Meillassoux in his work “After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency”. The main goal of this movement was to overcome correlationism and to provide direct access to the world. It also explored the possibility of conceiving the Absolute. In the 2010s, speculative realism gained popularity and became a fashionable philosophical trend. Its main tenets included the rejection of anthropocentrism and the aestheticization of weird works of art. This led to a number of studies that explored experiences that were alien to humans. The field of philosophy has evolved, and while Plato would have avoided discussing unimportant “trashes” such as hair, dirt, and litter, more recently, mucus, viruses, hammers, plastic containers, and prehistoric objects have become the focus of philosophical discourse. After almost 20 years, we can question the success of this project. Quentin Meillassoux, who was one of the pioneers of the speculative turn, did not produce a comprehensive work like “After the Finite”, and the movement quickly split into various directions. How has this project concluded? Has it been completed? Can philosophy even speak for the inhuman?