Friend of mine put me on this Zizek quote, from his work Less Than Nothing:
What if we posit that “Things-in-themselves” emerge against the background of the Void of Nothingness, the way this Void is conceived in quantum physics, as not just a negative void, but the portent of all possible reality? This is the only true consistent “transcendental materialism” which is possible after the Kantian transcendental idealism. For a true dialectician, the ultimate mystery is not “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but “Why is there nothing rather than something?”
IIRC there was some past discussion of Transcendental Materialism or at least "New Materialism" - will see if I can dig it up but curious if anyone else had come across this line of thinking?
My understanding is that we begin with the material but then the subjective aspect is something born of that which is accounted for by physics yet goes beyond it.
What if we posit that “Things-in-themselves” emerge against the background of the Void of Nothingness, the way this Void is conceived in quantum physics, as not just a negative void, but the portent of all possible reality? This is the only true consistent “transcendental materialism” which is possible after the Kantian transcendental idealism. For a true dialectician, the ultimate mystery is not “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but “Why is there nothing rather than something?”
IIRC there was some past discussion of Transcendental Materialism or at least "New Materialism" - will see if I can dig it up but curious if anyone else had come across this line of thinking?
My understanding is that we begin with the material but then the subjective aspect is something born of that which is accounted for by physics yet goes beyond it.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell