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'This major and important study offers a genuinely contemporary ontology that does not shy away from thinking a contingent God beyond the confines of possible-God theologies. Inspired by Schelling, the author shows which speculative theology remains possible today after ontotheology. A crucial and much needed contribution to a fundamental debate.'
Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Radboud University
Looks at how necessity and contingency impact on a range of philosophical fields
All necessity is based on the utter contingency of being, the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Tyler Tritten examines the ramifications of this truth arguing that even God, while necessary according to essence, is utterly contingent with respect to existence.
Focusing on this central striking claim that there is something rather than nothing, that all necessity is consequent, Tritten engages with a wide range of ancient as well as contemporary philosophers including Quentin Meillassoux, Richard Kearney, Friedrich Schelling, Émile Boutroux and Markus Gabriel.
Tyler Tritten is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Gonzaga University.
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edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN [PPC] 978-1-4744-2819-4
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List of contents
INTRODUCTION: An Attempt at a Speculative Ontology or An Alternative to Possible-God Theologies; PART I. Critical and Constructive Preliminaries: Meillassoux, Boutroux and the Early Schelling; 1. Meillassoux Against the Principle of Reason: An Ontology of Factiality; 2. Boutroux's Alternative: An Ontology of the Fact; 3. On the Primacy of Matter: Neoplatonism Right-Side Up; PART II. Contingent Reason and a Contingent God: The Late Schelling and the Late Heidegger; 4. Reason as Consequent Universal: On Thinking and Being; 5. Decision and Withdrawal: On the Facticity and Posteriority of God; 6. Event and De-cision: Towards an Appropriation of Heidegger's Last God; PART III. Application and Concluding Remarks; 7. A Response to Old Riddles and a New Typology; Afterword.
About the author
Tyler Tritten is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Gonzaga University. He received his Ph.D. from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium in 2012 and later spent two years (2015-2016) as an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Theology at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. His publications focus on speculative philosophy in areas of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, non-prescriptive ethics and the history of philosophy. He is the author of Beyond Presence: The Late F. W. J. Schelling's Criticism of Metaphysics (De Gruyter, 2012) and co-editor of a special issue of the journal Angelaki: Nature, Speculation and the Return to Schelling (Vol. 21.4, 2017).
Summary
Focusing on the central striking claim that all necessity is consequent. Tritten engages with ancient and contemporary philosophers including Quentin Meillassoux, Richard Kearney, Friedrich Schelling, Emile Boutroux and Markus Gabriel. He argues that even reason and God, while necessary according to essence, are contingent in existence.
