After Finitude Quotes

“If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power--something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, yet also of never doing anything, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm. We see an omnipotence equal to that of the Cartesian God, and capable of anything, even the inconceivable; but an omnipotence that has become autonomous, without norms, blind, devoid of the other divine perfections, a power with neither goodness nor wisdom, ill-disposed to reassure thought about the veracity of its distinct ideas. We see something akin to Time, but a Time that is inconceivable for physics, since it is capable of destroying without cause or reason, every physical law, just as it is inconceivable for metaphysics, since it is capable of destroying every determinate entity, even a god, even God. This is not a Heraclitean time, since it is not the eternal law of becoming, but rather the eternal and lawless possible becoming of every law. It is a Time capable of destroying even becoming itself by bringing forth, perhaps forever, fixity, stasis, and death.”
― Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency

“Instead of laughing or smiling at questions like 'Where do we come from?', 'Why do we exist?', we should ponder instead the remarkable fact that the replies 'From nothing. For nothing' really are answers, thereby realizing that these really were questions - and excellent ones at that. There is no longer a mystery, not because there is no longer a problem, but because there is no longer a reason.”
― Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency

“Rationality, during the enlightenment, had to fight religion; and they fought religion with the most up-to-date science: physics. They fought it with the necessity of physical laws. The problem—Hume saw this, he saw it very well—is that the necessity of laws is not something you can demonstrate, but only something you can believe in: so it’s a belief against another belief. And in fact I think the belief in the necessity of laws is necessarily a belief in God, because you believe in what you cannot demonstrate, you believe in an order that guarantees laws. In fact, you may not believe in god any more, but you believe in the divine solidity of laws.”
― Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency