Object-oriented Quadrupole

Contemporary speculative realism rejects the philosophy since Kant that bases its problems on the correlationism between thinking and being and opposes "prescribing laws to nature".The American philosopher Graham Harman,one of the four leaders of the speculative realism.He argued that this philosophy based on the correlation between thinking and being,namely,correlationism,leads to anthropocentrism and the undermining of things.Harman traces this philosophy back to the occasionalism what appealing to God as the cause of all causality,and also holds that this philosophical tradition brings about the ontological dominance of the subject at the same time Concealing the philosophical richness of the thing in itself.In order to escape from the problem of correlationism since Kant,Harman proposes object-oriented ontology,which emphasizes the natural existence of object apart from relations and reaffirms the ontological priority of object.It is argued that the subject-object relation emphasized by correlationism is only a special kind of object-object relation,and that the subject does not have ontological superiority.Object-oriented ontology strictly follows Socrates’ definition of philosophy as the love of wisdom,as opposed to the scientific pursuit of knowledge.Harman argues that the finiteness of correlation leads to the real that all objects cannot know each other completely,and that human likewise cannot acquire thorough knowledge or truth about any thing.He placed more emphasis on acquiring metaphorical and indirect knowledge of objects through aesthetics than through science.While Harman believes that science can only obtain a "justified untrue belief",Harman’s object-oriented ontology prefers to resort to aesthetic metaphor to obtain a "unjustified true belief".Haman’s object has the characteristics of plat-ontology and anti-reductionism.Harman believe that object as substance of various sizes and magnitudes are the "arche" of the entire universe and that these substance are never exhausted by any correlation.Harman argues that thinking can only partially reveal real,and believe that correlation Concealing the real object of the real existence while revealing them as sensual object.The sensual object is emerges from the correlation,and the real object is concealed in the correlation.The quadruple object theory is the methodology of object-oriented ontology.By establishing four poles: sensual object,sensual qualities,real object,and real qualities,the quadruple object theory establishes a quadruple structure arising from the combination of the sense-real axis and the object-qualities axis.The quadruple object theory unfolds from the four poles of objects and generates ten relations with each other two by two.Through this quadruple structure forms the methodological basis for the research of object-oriented ontology.Haman tries to find an indirect path to the thing-in-itself through the methodology of aesthetic metaphor.This indirect access to the thing-in-itself is what Harman calls "vicarious causation".In further research of the quadruple object theory,it was found that although Harman’s quadruple object theory and Latour’s actor network theory belong to object-oriented ontology,there are subtle differences between the two theories.The theoretical differences are mainly reflected in four aspects,namely,in terms of the quadruple structure,in terms of the methodology,in terms of the understanding of objects,and in terms of the purpose of the theory.Haman’s quadruple object theory provided a new theory of thing.Although Harman’s adoption of aesthetic metaphors to indirectly access the real is pending further discussion,object-oriented ontology does provide a new approach to the research of objects.Quadruple object theory as Harman’s methodological approach to the research of objects provide a quadruple dialectic of objects.In this post-truth era,where the divine encounter between correlation and real,God and chaos,appears more intense than ever before,Harman’s philosophy revisits the object in this unstable age,and hopefully this quadruple dialectical negation of his will continue to bring us new discoveries.