Copernican Turn 2.0: Meillassoux versus Kant

This article examines the essence of the Copernican turn accomplished by the modern French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, a representative of speculative realism, in his work After Finitude. I use as a starting point the classical definition of the Copernican turn given by Kant in the second introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason. I then compare this definition with the “new” interpretation offered by the French philosopher. According to Meillassoux, Kant and the following philosophical tradition (Neo-Kantianism and phenomenology) misinterpreted the true role of the Copernican discovery in the new European science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and turned the objective world into a correlate of consciousness. I subject this assessment of Kant’s philosophy to critical analysis. I compare two points of view — that of Kant and of Meillassoux — on the essence of the Copernican turn and demonstrate the limited character of the latter in comparison with the former. I come to the conclusion that Meillassoux’s critique of the substance of the Copernican turn, as well as his labelling of it as “Ptolemaism” is not only unjustified, but is in many ways in stark contradiction with the real content of the new European science. Proceeding from the Critique of Pure Reason I examine the main postulates of Meillassoux’s anti-correlationist programme, in particular, the problematic character of diachronic judgments as well as decentring and desubjectivation of thinking. In conclusion I note that although Meillassoux’s pro­ject in a number of ways repeats the main intentions of post-structuralism, the call of the speculative philosophy “back to Hume and pre-critical metaphysics” is in a way an answer to the crisis in which post-critical philosophy finds itself today.