Introduction: The Philosophical Conjuncture
The Introduction argues that the mutually reinforcing relationship between speculation and critique depends upon sustaining a methodological tension between rationalism and empiricism. I explicate the stakes of this tension through engagements with Gaston Bachelard’s epistemology of science and Louis Althusser’s theory of the epistemological break. I frame the contemporary relevance of the “rationalist empiricist” approach developed by these thinkers through Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude, showing how tools from Bachelard and Althusser enable the construction of a more rigorous materialist epistemology than that offered by Meillassoux. I conclude with a critique of the “subjective dogmatism” of Kant’s theory of purposiveness and with a reflection upon Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of philosophy.