Após a Finitude de Quentin Meillassoux

Abstract

The “boom” of ontological realism in certain areas of the philosophical mainstream has as one of its main catalysts the seminal work by Quentin Meillassoux called After Finitude: Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (2006/2022). This short text, which was a preamble to the French philosopher’s more robust system, presents us with conceptual inputs that impose themselves as crucial for the development of certain philosophical lines that are already relatively well established in our contemporary times, namely: (a) there is a link with Speculative Realism based mainly on the notions of “Correlationism” and “Speculative Materialism”; (b) a link with New Realism based on notions such as “Archefossil” and “Transfinite”; and finally (c) a link with the contemporary impetus to produce bold articulations within philosophical realism as we can see, for example, in what we call “Realismo da Silva”. The objective of our review is to explain the core content of Meillassoux’s text through its relations with each of these lines of development.