I find the most interesting philosophers are ones that make me rethink my previous ideas while still not quite sitting well enough with me to fully sign on to their philosophy, thus forcing me to develop my own ideas in response. Such is the case with Graham Harman and his object-oriented ontology.
I've long been fascinated by Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy(a fascination that runs in the family). Actually, it would better be described as "process-relational philosophy," as Whitehead, like Wittgenstein and a few other philosophers of his day, took relations as the fundamental building blocks of reality. Reality, for him, is constructed of single "actual occasions" which are relational in nature, and which form complex occasions called "societies" or "actual entities." Some of these actual entities form what are called "enduring objects," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. But the enduring objects have to recreate themselves at every moment to maintain their identity. Thus, instead of a continuity of becoming, what you have is a becoming of continuity. I won't yet go into the role that God plays in Whitehead's system, because that's not really important for the point at hand. The point is that in his system, objects are defined by their relations, and maintain their identity through a process of inheritance from the past.
Harman, starting from a Heideggerian perspective comes to a very different view. Heidegger famously spoke about the use of a hammer. While you're using a hammer, its status as an object is invisible to you. It exists purely as a tool that is "ready-to-hand." We can use it with theorizing about it. Only when it breaks does it become "present-at-hand" -- that is to say, present as a real object. But whereas this analysis has traditionally been interpreted from a phenomenological angle, in terms of what tools are "for us," Harman offers the more radical suggestion that whether he knew it or not, Heidegger is actually giving us an ontology of objects. Using the example of a hammer is a bit deceiving, since hammers have to be wielded by the person using them. But the ready-to-hand can be found all around us at any moment. As I speak, there are wood beams holding up the roof over my head, which in turn are held together by nails. Solar radiation is penetrating the Earth's atmosphere and warming up the planet to a temperature at which I am able to survive. Plants are producing oxygen I require to breathe. Electricity is being supplied to my house, thus allowing me to type this sentence on the keyboard and have it show up on the internet. Objects all around me are exerting a real force upon the world to form a background of order that is invisible because it functions so perfectly. Only when these things break down do they become present to me. These objects don't exist the way they do for me. They exist in their own right, and they exert a real force upon the world because of some inner quality that gives them the capacity to relate to other objects.
