A couple of years ago I had the privilege of speaking at Lund university on the subject of Quentin Meillassoux’s treatment of the anthypothetical principle of logic in L’Inexistence divine and elsewhere. Thanks in large part to the persistent hard work of Admir Skodo, the conference papers have been reworked, expanded, and found their way to publication with Brill in a new volume called Other Logics.
Here is the abstract of the original paper I gave in Lund, called “Proving the Principle of Logic: Quentin Meillassoux, Jean-Luc Nancy and the anhypothetical”:
The question of whether logic itself is susceptible of proof, and of what form any proof of logic would take, has occupied philosophical minds from Plato to our own day. Both Plato and Aristotle make mention of a principle of dialectic that is anhypothetical, not itself relying on hypotheses or the dialectic it would seek to found. The challenge of demonstrating an anhypothetical principle of logic is taken up by the contemporary French thinker Quentin Meillassoux who, rejecting Plato and building on Aristotle, offers an indirect proof of his assertion that ‘only contingency is necessary’. In this paper I read Meillassoux through Jean-Luc Nancy’s meditations on love to argue that, bold as Meillassoux’s proposal is, he can in fact be shown to prove quite the opposite of what he intends, though more important than this failure is what it reveals of the rich and productive interplay between love and logic themselves. This is not a paper arguing for love against logic, or even love at the limits of logic, but for the recognition of a love that is inextricable from logic and yet can never straightforwardly become its object.
And here is the blurb for the book:
Other Logics: Alternatives to Formal Logic in the History of Thought and Contemporary Philosophy challenges the widespread idea of formal logic as inherently monolithic, universal, and ahistorical. Written by both leading and up-and-coming scholars, and edited by Admir Skodo, Other Logics offers a wide variety of historical and philosophical alternatives to this idea, all arguing that logic is a historical, concrete, and multi-dimensional phenomenon. To name a few examples, Frank Ankersmit lays down a representationalist logic, Alessandra Tanesini forcefully argues for the possibility of logical aliens, Christopher Watkin analyzes how leading contemporary French philosophers view the idea of logic, and Aaron Wendland unearths Heidegger’s critique of formal logic. In Other Logicsreaders will find provocative interventions in a highly contested field in contemporary philosophy.
Contributors include: Frank Ankersmit, Christopher Watkin, Giuseppina D’Oro, Alessandra Tanesini, Admir Skodo, Aaron Wendland, Ervik Cejvan, Anders Kraal, Christopher Fear, Karim Dharamsi, Johan Modée, and Thord Svensson.
