No Limit. On What Thought Can Actually Do Part II Joсelyn Benoist

Abstract

The text published here is a continuation of [Benoist 2023]. In modern philoso­phy, the sensible being of a thing is subjectivised, seen as relative, dependent on the subject. Locke introduced the distinction between primary and secondary qualities to which the modern speculative realist Q. Meillassoux also refers. Eliminating this distinction, Kant took the next step in the absolutization of the notion of phenomenon. For Kant, the sensible is measured against the non-sensi­ble thing-in-itself. For Meillassoux, it is measured against the Absolute deprived of any sensibility, which the philosopher of overcoming of finitude wants to know. In fact, as J. Benoist shows, the sensible is not a limitation, not an obstacle to access to the true being, but the being itself, or at any rate an important com­ponent of it. It is necessary to overcome the modern subjectivity of the sensible. But this is not enough. It is also necessary to overcome phenomenology that ab­solutizes the idea of limit and essentializes finitude. Benoist turns to the philoso­phy of the later Wittgenstein, which criticizes the idea of (im)possibility to have a non-perspectival view of an object. Knowledge and thought are contextual. In fact, contextuality is not a principle of relativisation, not a finitude, not a limit to thought. In general, the idea of such a limit is inconsistent. Nor does contextu­ality of thought exclude its universality; on the contrary, it is the condition of it.