Episode 8: On Graham Harman's "The Third Table"

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2018

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

JF and Phil discuss Graham Harman's "The Third Table," a short and accessible introduction to "object-oriented ontology." Phil takes us on a tour of his closet, we discover that JF's kids are better at this weird studies stuff than their old man, and the conversation veers through Harman's Lovecraftian "weird realism," Zen's "just sit" meditation, panpsychism, Martin Buber's I and Thou, experimental filmmaking, and more. WORKS AND IDEAS CITED IN THIS EPISODE Graham Harman, "The Third Table" Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects Martin Heidegger, Being in Time J. F. Martel, "Ramble on the Real" Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World Graham Harman, "Objects and the Arts" (lecture) Bernardo Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained Walden, A Game – A computer game based on Heny David Thoreau’s classic work, Walden South Park, “Guitar Queer-O” (season 11, episode 13) Wikipedia entry on art critic David Hickey Heraclitus, Fragments Martin Buber, I and Thou The concept of “substantial form” in Aristotle’s philosophy Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things William James, "Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?" Andy Warhol’s minimalist films Empire and Sleep Wikipedia entry on filmmaker Terrence Malick Neil Jordan (director), The End of the Affair (based on the novel by Graham Greene) J. F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (painting) Matthew Akers (director), David Blaine: Beyond Magic The Duffer Brothers (directors), Stranger Things 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio.
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martell.
0:21.9	For more episodes and to support the podcast, go to Weird Studies.com. Hey, this is Phil.
0:51.5	Now, look at something lying close by to you right now. I don't know what that might be. Maybe it's a potted plant or a musical instrument. Or a table. Doesn't matter. Look at your chosen object and ask, what am I seeing? Well, it's a table, right? What do you want? It's got four legs and a flat top with like a ring from where that one guy left his beer without using a coaster.
1:17.4	Now, a scientist might say, ah, no, you're not seeing the real table.
1:21.5	The real table is the swirling dance of energetic particles are revealed to us by science.
1:28.4	You can't see it, but that is the table's true reality.
1:32.7	Reality is available only through special techniques of study, mathematics, electron
1:37.0	microscopes, and whatnot.
1:39.9	But what if the reality of the table lay precisely in that aspect of it that we never see, and will never see, no matter what experimental techniques we devise?
1:49.0	That would be what Graham Harmon calls the third table.
1:53.0	The third table is a mystery. It draws us in and pushes us away.
1:58.0	We can never look at it directly, yet we might catch a glimpse
2:02.0	of it, sometimes, out of the corner of our eye, in that state of Gnosis called art.
2:09.1	What are things in themselves? Can you see them? Do you really want to see them? What claim
2:16.3	does the thing in itself have on us?
2:18.8	What happens when we go from thinking of a thing as it to thinking of it as you?
2:25.9	We hope you enjoy our conversation. So we're discussing Graham Harmon's essay, The Third Table.
2:53.4	It's kind of almost like a pre-C or summary of his philosophy, which he calls object-oriented philosophy.
3:02.5	The name later transmuted or evolved to object-oriented ontology, which is very convenient for internet philosophers
3:09.7	because they can abbreviate it, oh, oh, oh, which is fun to type.
3:13.6	And this is a movement in contemporary metaphysics that is, it's kind of part of a larger
	...

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