6 - Can We Relinquish the Transcendental?

Summary

I borrow the terms of my title's question from Quentin Meillassoux's book After Finitude, which I intend to discuss here, a book that has provoked a genuine thunderstorm in the philosophical sky. ‘The primary condition to the issue I intend to deal with here’, Meillassoux says, ‘is “the relinquishing of transcendentalism”’ (2009: 27). The French expression is l’abandon du transcendantal. I think that ‘the relinquishing of the transcendental’ is better than ‘the relinquishing of transcendentalism’. As for relinquish, it implies something softer, gentler, than abandon. Abandonment means a definite separation, whereas relinquishing designates a negotiated rupture, a farewell that maintains a relationship with what it splits from. Whether Meillassoux's abandon means ‘relinquishing’ or ‘abandonment’ will be examined later. For the moment I wish to insist upon the fact that he proposes that we leave the transcendental, and consequently also Kant, behind. What I intend to question is this very gesture: Can we relinquish the transcendental, and consequently, can we relinquish Kant?

The problem is all the more serious if we admit that Kantianism may be considered the very origin, the very foundation, of European philosophy, that is, of the continental tradition. So the ‘we’ included in the question ‘Can we relinquish the transcendental?’ addresses all continental philosophers. Its signification then becomes: Can we relinquish the transcendental without relinquishing purely and simply continental philosophy? Without putting at risk continental philosophy's identity? Such is the immense challenge raised by After Finitude.

First, I will examine the reasons for such a challenge, which will lead me to expose Meillassoux's main arguments. I will then discuss them.

Transcendental, says Kant in the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, should be understood both as synonymous with a priori, meaning ‘absolutely independently of all experience’ (1998: 137), and as synonymous with the condition of possibility in general: ‘The a priori possibility of cognition […] can be called transcendental’ (1998: 196). The relinquishing of the transcendental, then, implies a break with the a priori, with the idea of the condition of possibility, as well as with their circularity.