Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the

Southern California Institute of Architecture Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is a private architecture school in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1972, SCI-Arc was initially regarded as both institutionally and artistically avant-garde and more adventurous than t ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

. His work on the

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

objects Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...

led to the development of object-oriented ontology. He is a central figure in the

speculative realism Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy (also known as post-Continental philosophy) that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of p ...

trend in

contemporary philosophy Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the early 20th century with the increasing professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy. The phrase "c ...

Biography

Harman was born in

Iowa City Iowa City, offically the City of Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is the home of the University of Iowa and county seat of Johnson County, at the center of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the time ...

and raised in

Mount Vernon, Iowa Mount Vernon is a city in Linn County, Iowa, United States, adjacent to the city of Lisbon. The population was 4,527 at the time of the 2020 census. Mount Vernon is part of the Cedar Rapids Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Mount Vernon w ...

. He received a B.A. from St. John's College in

Annapolis, Maryland Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east ...

in 1990, and went on to graduate school at

Penn State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

to earn a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

, studying under philosopher

Alphonso Lingis Alphonso Lingis (born November 23, 1933) is an American philosopher, writer and translator, with Lithuanian roots, currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. His areas of specialization include phenomenology, ex ...

, in 1991. While pursuing a Ph.D. at

DePaul University DePaul University is a private, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1998, it became the largest Ca ...

, Harman worked as an online sports reporter, an experience which he credits for developing his writing style and productivity. After finishing his degree in 1999 he joined the Department of Philosophy at the

American University in Cairo The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning progra ...

, where he taught from 2000-2016, leaving at the rank of Distinguished University Professor. He has also been a visiting faculty member at the University of Amsterdam, University of Turin, and Yale University. Since 2013 he has been a faculty member at the

European Graduate School The European Graduate School (EGS) is a private graduate school that operates in two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta. History It was founded in 1994 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland by the Swiss scientist, artist, and therapist, P ...

Philosophical work

Harman starts the development of his work with

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...

's concept of "tool-analysis" from ''

Being and Time ''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 '' magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many oth ...

''. To Harman, tool-analysis was a key discovery which establishes the groundwork for taking seriously the autonomous existence of objects and, in doing so, highlights deficiencies in

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

due to its subordination of objects to their use by or relationship with humans. Harman is considered part of the

trend, a nebulous grouping of philosophers united by two perspectives: a rejection of anthropocentric "philosophies of access" which privilege the perspective of humans in relation to objects, and a support of

metaphysical realism Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has ''mind-independent ex ...

via rejection of "correlationism", an assumption in post-Kantian philosophy that fellow speculative realist

Quentin Meillassoux Quentin Meillassoux (; ; born 26 October 1967) is a French philosopher. He teaches at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Biography Quentin Meillassoux is the son of the anthropologist Claude Meillassoux. He is a former student of th ...

defines as "the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other." Following the early conception of metaphor in the work of the Spanish philosopher

José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosoph ...

, in which both humans and non-humans are treated not as correlates of one another but as having equally rich independent lives, Harman's object-oriented approach considers the life of objects to be fertile ground for a metaphysics that works to overcome anthropocentrism and correlationism. According to Harman, everything is an object, whether it be a mailbox, a

shadow A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two- dimensional silhouett ...

spacetime In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why differ ...

, a fictional character, or the

Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the C ...

. However, drawing on

, he does distinguish between two categories of objects: real objects and sensual objects (or

intentional object An object of the mind is an object that exists in the imagination, but which, in the real world, can only be represented or modeled. Some such objects are abstractions, literary concepts, or fictional scenarios. Closely related are intentional ob ...

s), which sets his philosophy apart from the flat ontology of

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...

. Harman defines real objects as inaccessible and infinitely withdrawn from all relations and then puzzles over how such objects can be accessed or enter into relations: "by definition, there is no direct access to real objects. Real objects are incommensurable with our knowledge, untranslatable into any relational access of any sort, cognitive or otherwise. Objects can only be known indirectly. And this is not just the fate of humans — it’s the fate of everything." Central to Harman's philosophy is the idea that real objects are inexhaustible: "A police officer eating a banana reduces this fruit to a present-at-hand profile of its elusive depth, as do a monkey eating the same banana, a parasite infecting it, or a gust of wind blowing it from a tree. Banana-being is a genuine reality in the world, a reality never exhausted by any relation to it by humans or other entities." (Harman 2005: 74). Because of this inexhaustibility, claims Harman, there is a metaphysical problem regarding how two objects can ever interact. His solution is to introduce the notion of "vicarious causation", according to which objects can only ever interact on the inside of an "intention" (which is also an object). Cutting across the phenomenological tradition, and especially its

linguistic turn The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy and the other humanities primarily on the relations between language, langua ...

, Harman deploys a brand of metaphysical realism that attempts to extricate objects from their human captivity and metaphorically allude to a strange subterranean world of "vacuum-sealed" objects-in-themselves: "The comet itself, the monkey itself, Coca-Cola itself, resonate in cellars of being where no relation reaches." Strongly sympathetic to

panpsychism In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism () is the view that the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists thro ...

, Harman proposes a new philosophical discipline called "speculative psychology" dedicated to investigating the "cosmic layers of psyche" and "ferreting out the specific psychic reality of earthworms, dust, armies, chalk, and stone." Harman does not, however, unreservedly endorse an all-encompassing panpsychism and instead proposes a sort of 'polypsychism' that nonetheless must "balloon beyond all previous limits, but without quite extending to all entities".Graham Harman 2011, ''The Quadruple Object.'' He continues by stating that "perceiving" and "non-perceiving" are not different kinds of objects, but can be found in the same entity at different times: "The important point is that objects do not perceive insofar as they exist, as panpsychism proclaims. Instead they perceive insofar as they relate." Harman rejects

scientism Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientis ...

on account of its

anthropocentrism Anthropocentrism (; ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity in the universe. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. ...

: "For them, raindrops know nothing and lizards know very little, and some humans are more knowledgeable than others."

Bibliography

Authored works

* 2002. ''Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects'' (

Open Court Publishing The Open Court Publishing Company is a publisher with offices in Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois. It is part of the Carus Publishing Company of Peru, Illinois. History Open Court was founded in 1887 by Edward C. Hegeler of the Matthiessen-Hegele ...

) * 2005. ''Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things'' (Open Court Publishing) * 2007. ''Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing'' (Open Court Publishing) * 2009
''Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics''
( re.press) * 2010. ''Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures'' (

Zero Books John Hunt Publishing is a left-wing publishing company founded in the United Kingdom in 2001, initially named O Books. The publisher has 24 active autonomous imprints, with the largest of these being the Zero Books imprint (styled Zer0 Books) f ...

) * 2010. ''Circus Philosophicus'' (

) * 2010. ''L'objet quadruple'' (

Presses Universitaires de France Presses universitaires de France (PUF, English: ''University Press of France''), founded in 1921 by Paul Angoulvent (1899–1976), is the largest French university publishing house. Recent company history The financial and legal structure of ...

; republished in English as ''The Quadruple Object'', 2011, Zero Books). * 2011. ''The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE'' (Zero Books, with

and Peter Erdélyi) * 2011. ''Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making'' (

Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh University Press is a scholarly publisher of academic books and journals, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. History Edinburgh University Press was founded in the 1940s and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Edinburgh ...

) * 2012. ''Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy'' (Zero Books) * 2013. ''Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism'' (Zero Books) * 2014. ''Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political'' (

Pluto Press Pluto Press is a British independent book publisher based in London, founded in 1969. Originally, it was the publishing arm of the International Socialists (today known as the Socialist Workers Party), until it changed hands and was replaced ...

) * 2016. ''Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory'' ( Polity Press) * 2016. ''Dante's Broken Hammer: The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Metaphysics of Love'' (

Repeater Books Repeater Books is a publishing imprint based in London, founded in 2014 by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher, formerly the founders of radical publishers Zero Books, along with Etan Ilfeld, Tamar Shlaim, Alex Niven and Matteo Mandarini. Formation ...

) * 2017. ''The Rise of Realism'' (Polity Press, with

Manuel DeLanda Manuel DeLanda (born 1952) is a Mexican- American writer, artist and philosopher who has lived in New York since 1975. He is a lecturer in architecture at the Princeton University School of Architecture and the University of Pennsylvania School ...

) * 2018. ''Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything'' ( Pelican Books) * 2018. ''Speculative Realism: An Introduction'' (Polity Press) * 2020. ''Art and Objects'' (Polity Press) * 2020. ''Is There an Object-Oriented Architecture? Engaging Graham Harman (

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest ...

) * 2020
''Skirmishes: With Friends, Enemies, and Neutrals''
( Punctum Books) *2021
''Artful Objects: Graham Harman on Art and the Business of Speculative Realism''
( Sternberg Press) *2022
''Architecture and Objects''
(

University of Minnesota Press The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018. Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its boo ...

)

Edited works

''The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism''
(2011, re.press, with co-editors Levi Bryant and Nick Srnicek) * Editor of the "Speculative Realism" series, published by Edinburgh University Press * Editor of the "New Metaphysics" series, published by Open Humanities Press * Editor-in-Chief of ''Open Philosophy'', published by

De Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

References

External links

New home page 2016 at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)

Home page 2016 at the American University in Cairo (AUC)
an
versions (with a few extra links) at an older URL

Object-Oriented Philosophy

numerous posts and links of Harman's talks, abstracts etc.

Audio recordings of Harman's talks

Frieze on Graham Harman

Webpage for ''Collapse'' journal featuring contributions by Graham Harman and other "speculative realists"

16 unpublished articles

Robert Nelson: Philosopher

On the Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl

Interview/podcast with Graham Harman (2013)

Figure/Ground interview

On the Ontology of Aesthetic Objects: Graham Harman's Dante's Broken Hammer--by Rolando Pérez
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harman, Graham 1968 births 20th-century American architects 20th-century American essayists 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century educational theorists 21st-century American architects 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century educational theorists Abstract object theory Academics from Iowa Action theorists American architecture critics American architecture writers American cultural critics American educational theorists American ethicists American expatriates in Egypt American literary critics American male essayists American philosophy academics American sports journalists American sportswriters The American University in Cairo faculty Architects from Iowa American consciousness researchers and theorists Continental philosophers DePaul University alumni Educators from Iowa Epistemologists European Graduate School faculty Founders of philosophical traditions Heidegger scholars History of philosophy H. P. Lovecraft scholars Intellectual history Journalists from Iowa Linguistic turn Literacy and society theorists Living people Metaphysicians Metaphysics writers Moral philosophers Ontologists Panpsychism Pennsylvania State University alumni People from Mount Vernon, Iowa Phenomenologists Philosophers from Iowa Philosophers of art Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of love Philosophers of mind Philosophers of psychology Philosophers of science Philosophy teachers Philosophy writers Social critics Social philosophers Southern California Institute of Architecture faculty St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) alumni University of Amsterdam faculty University of Turin faculty Writers from Iowa Yale University faculty