Meillassoux... but not all at once! (After Finitude Part 2)

For the next few paragraphs, Meillassoux remains in that correlational perspective which ensues once one "refuses to hypostatize the correlate". Consequently, for the next couple pages I'm disagreeing with everything. You'd think I were some kind of contrarian. Of course, that's his point. 

The correlationist that must deal with the arche-fossil or any ancestral statement takes it not as a thing that is in fact prior to givenness itself, but as something that merely pretends to be prior to givenness. 

I have no beef with him here--I would thoroughly disagree with any objection to the ancestral statement based on such arguments. What I'm not sure I believe is that it matters so much that something anterior to givenness has been posited. I think it's perfectly legitimate for something given to humans right now to present also its mode of generation in such a way that makes it possible to trace back to a time when no one would have been around to witness it. Here: 

"The deeper sense of ancestrality resides in the logical retrojection imposed upon its superficially chronological sense"  (16).

 This, I think, is where he (or is it they?) seem(s) to detect a more ponderous implication in the anteriority to givenness than I feel ready to admit. It's that logical retrojection, man!

And I do believe we "see" the thing as it was with the same cloudy eyes with which we see things now. But that doesn't mean (to me) that the way in which we see it isn't legitimate and that it doesn't present itself legitimately. It presents itself as itself and we understand it enough to do anything with our information about it. To me, the Kantian revolution was not much more than a universalised solipsism. (To oversimplify a little...)

This backward projection of the object to its ancestral statement that reminds me of something Kant said about reason in its pursuit of a proof of the existence of God. Or of infinity. Or their ilk. It was that, in its hubris (or whatever), reason marches on, and without anything to curb its profligacy, it transgresses into territory reason shouldn't breach. I wonder if Kant would have something to say about the method of pursuing the ancestral. I, personally, don't mind it--I like the math. But something about the similarity of both processes' careers just struck me. It probably means nothing.  

My ears perk up at the ensuing question: "Now why is this interpretation of ancestrality obviously insupportable?" (16). I'm ready to be in agreement with you now, Meillassoux. I'm scared to disagree with you; you're too smart. 

But first, two related questions:

Why are you spending so much time explaining the correlationist perspective?

How come it took so long for someone to refute all these interpretations if they're so obviously false? 

I think the answer to the first is in the previous blog (Part 1): that this might be what being a correlationist really means, though those who adopt this philosophical stance might not have realized this particular implication. 

 Maybe no one can answer the second... or maybe...