Speculative Justice: Quentin Meillassoux and Politics

One of the reasons for the enthusiastic reception of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude is that the book seemingly allows us to disentangle metaphysics from politics. In this article I argue that this interpretation ignores the way in which Meillassoux positions his philosophy of contingency as a normative fusion of values and the real. Drawing on the published fragments of The Divine Inexistence, his book The Number and the Siren and comments made in interviews, the article pieces together Meillassoux’s ambition to combat the collectivist ‘historical symbol’ of modernity and replace it with an individual, ethical orientation guided by speculative philosophy.