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Review of:
The End of Phenomenology:
Metaphysics and the New
Realism
TOM S PARROW
[Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2014
pp. 197, ISBN 9780748684830, C19,99 .]
Keywords:
Pages: 177182
Paul J. Ennis

Trinity College Dublin

pjebleak@autistici.org

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forward Tom Sparrow as my own. A lapsed phenomenologists with a taste

for speculative realism? Someone trained traditional phenomenology who had
always had questions concerning precisely what it is? Someone who had always
had the nagging feeling that the question of phenomenological method was being
evaded? Indeed, it is fair to say I did not come to this book in a presuppositionalist
manner. As is well-known, phenomenologists are constantly valorising the open-
endedness of phenomenology: revision of method is, at least in-house, considered
a virtue. In turn, many lapsed phenomenologists have found themselves frustrated
by the vagaries of a self-proclaimed science. Surely there is just a method for me
to follow and I can go about my phenomenological descriptions? Without it how
will I even be able to test my results? How do I know Im not just scrambling
around in the dark as in the days before I sat down with Husserls texts? This is
the confusing aspect of phenomenology and it is one that is complicated by the
refusal of Husserls followers to either address the issue or at least refrain from
reconceiving it in their own manner. When vagueness in method is left unattended
we end up in the situation wherein almost anyone providing a good description of
some phenomena or other can be called a phenomenologist.
Sociologically one can, and this is often how phenomenology is presented,
explicate this tension between a relatively open method and the desire to ensure
the discipline does not become overly restrictive, thereby modelling its principle
opponent of naturalism. This tension between wishing to provide a science of
the phenomena and yet not devolve into a reductive natural science is crucial, but
has led to much methodological obfuscation. What vexes Sparrow, and admittedly
this author too, is just what this anti-naturalist antidote is in methodological terms.
Is it the ability to describe some feature of, to put it loosely, experience within the
predetermined antirealist coordinates of what we now describe as correlationism?
If so, one might be content to leave phenomenology alone, but, as Sparrow acutely
notes, the discipline refuses to stick to its antirealist foundations and consistently
ventures claims on the real.
The qualified realism of phenomenology may have passed unnoticed, or re-
mained passively accepted, were it not that speculative realism emerged as a counter
to what it means to be a continental philosopher, a kind of antirealist realist.
This is not an entirely negative event for phenomenology and may even allow it
to embrace what it truly is: a formidable idealism (EP, 12). One might say that
in speculative realism phenomenology has finally found a partner with which to
split the labour of thinking the ideal and the real rather than simply engaging in its
endless battle to demonstrate its credentials as that which is not reductive science
or onto-theological metaphysics or Anglo-American/analytic philosophy.
We find then that for Sparrow phenomenology is by no means over, but it
can finally take a holiday from its contortions concerning human-independent

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reality (EP, 13). Technically, at least according to the minimal conditions Sparrow
posits concerning phenomenological method, this makes perfect sense (EP, 14). If
phenomenology is, at least in its minimal form, that which involves us moving
from simple description to phenomenological reduction (in its myriad forms) we
know that one of the most definitive is the suspension of the natural attitude and
the implicit acceptance of a mind-independent reality that tends to come attached.
This is a prohibition against metaphysics in as much as phenomenology, if it is
consistent in its commitment to the appearances, must suspend comment on that
which is not given (EP, 15). Mind-independent reality is simply outside the range
of phenomenology contends with.
In Chapter 1, Realism in Phenomenology, Sparrow charts the various meth-
ods embraced by phenomenologists to establish nonetheless accept that there is a
real beyond the appearances: this occurs in suspending the question as is the man-
ner of Husserl, in the dependency-relation of the real upon Dasein (in terms of
meaning) posited by Heidegger, or the obliquely glimpsed real of Merleau-Ponty.
The latter figures work most strongly attests to Sparrows contention that as we
proceed through the tradition the question of method, in terms of adhering to the
original minimal conditions set by Husserl, becomes reduced to mere style, al-
most optional (EP, 48). Sparrow proceeds to delineate the progressive fracturing of
the tradition up into the contemporary tradition in this chapter and also impressive
is his deconstruction in Chapter 2 on The Rhetoric of Realism in Phenomenol-
ogy. Here the focus is on the rhetoric of concreteness which acts to supplement
phenomenology with a realist feel in order to offset its roots in transcendental
idealism (and thus the fear of being labelled idealist as such) (EP, 69). Whilst this
rhetoric has provided us with a number of interesting extensions, even transgres-
sions, of phenomenological method think of Levinas Other or Merleau-Pontys
Flesh they speak strongly to the self-imposed anthropocentric limitations of the
antirealist tradition they arose from. In a sense, then, the end of phenomenology
begins to look like hyper-awareness of the limitations of antirealism qua fundamen-
tal methodological commitment.
It is then not a surprise to see that a large section of the text is devoted to
Quentin Meillassouxs intervention into continental philosophy in recent years.
Chapter 3, Phenomenology as Strong Correlationism, delivers a sound account of
Meillassouxs refashioning of phenomenology as a form of correlationism and, in
particular, strong correlationism. Readers of this journal issue will no doubt be
familiar with the arguments of Meillassouxs After Finitude and I will not rehash
them here suffice to say that Meillassouxs various arguments tend to emphasise the
manner in which strong correlationism (say Heidegger or Levinas) will always, in
the last instance, relativize the in-itself as ultimately for-us. No matter how far
strong correlationism is willing to venture concerning concreteness or excess the

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co-relation is re-inserted at the last moment, a last line of defence. For instance, in
Meillassouxs ancestral argument we find that the strong correlationist will happily
admit there was a time anterior to correlation, but if it has any meaning it is only as
a retroactive projection from the present (anteriority is always for-us). From there
Meillassoux provides us with his fascinating escape from within the correlation,
but as Sparrow cautions both the refutation of correlationism (too complicated
to enter into here) and Meillassouxs positive metaphysics are often greeted with a
degree of scepticism (EP, 108). Nonetheless it is quite clear that they nonetheless
dispense a rejuvenating quality that is a merit in its own right (EP, 108). Much of
the following two chapters are dedicated to innovations generated within the newly
emergent field of speculative realism. Chapter 4, on Phenomenology: A Philoso-
phy of Access, expertly covers Harmans object-oriented ontology, and Chapter
5: Proliferating the Real, masterfully guides the reader through the thinking of
Iain Hamilton Grant, Ray Brassier, Levi Bryant, Timothy Morton, Ian Bogost and
Jane Bennett. In other words, tucked in between the criticism of the limitations
of phenomenological method we find a short, but exceptionally useful primer on
speculative realism that this reader can find no faults with.
The book returns to the central question concerning phenomenological method
in its brief conclusion. Admitting that it will end on a polemic note Sparrow
doubles-down on what the end of phenomenology might entail (EP, 185). Roughly
speaking for Sparrow his examination has revealed a number of ways in which phe-
nomenology never really began, started to end, ended or might end:
(1) It never existed because it never had a coherent method.

(2) It was truly a revival of transcendental idealism, but one consistently dis-
avowed as being as such.

(3) It devolved, roughly after the existential turn, into a mere informal style
shared by thinkers with roughly similar concerns.

(4) It never provided the means to do phenomenology meaning there has never
been a practising phenomenologist.

(5) It is moribund or undead and kept alive in a zombie like state (EP, 187).

(6) It might acted as a defence against totalised naturalism or reductionism, but

perhaps one only required at a time that has now past. If it wants to do this now
it needs to secure the missing method Sparrow has been searching for. Even worse
for its prospects is that if phenomenology is naturalised it is most certainly at an
end granting its minimal conditions concerning the natural attitude. Its reason for

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being will have disappeared.

The end of phenomenology seems inevitable when presented as such, but Spar-
row believes there are possibilities for revitalisation. It could forsake its realist
aspirations and earnestly embrace its idealist heritage (EP, 188). This, to my eyes,
is a reasonable option. It means the rhetoric of realism, the faux-concreteness, that
Sparrow has demonstrated haunts the tradition could be abandoned in favour of
a more rigorous defence of the transcendental core of correlationism. For Spar-
row this means that phenomenologists should turn to Hegel as a model granting
his totalising idealist tendencies (EP, 188). The precise contours of how this
might happen is left open, it is not Sparrows task after all, but it is certainly an
interesting option and one I hope to see embraced by those still committed to the
phenomenological tradition. Whatever is required it is clear that a renewed delin-
eation of method, a redefinition in general, is being called for (EP, 188). The same
demand, one notes, is also placed on speculative realism as it emerges more and
more from its nascent state (EP, 188).
This is, then, a timely book and not just because it can act as an introduction to
speculative realism by proxy. Rather it is timely because Sparrow has the courage
to point, without being disdainful, at the elephant in the phenomenologists room:
just what is your method? Just what is it you are doing? Sparrow is not the first to
think this, but he is the first to approach it forensically without the assumption that
there is an answer (there are many orthodox texts devoted to constructing uncon-
vincing answers to the question of phenomenological method). My only criticism
in this regard is the one the phenomenologist will also surely ask: why, precisely,
is phenomenology being interrogated so intensely regarding the question of real-
ism? Surely we have our distinct domains: phenomenologists line up over there,
speculative realists here and so on. In this regard it would have been helpful for
Sparrow to stress why a generational drift seems to be occurring within continen-
tal philosophy. Methodological confusion is one matter, but sociological demise is
quite another.
External factors have clearly played their part. Although the two contempo-
rary options of phenomenology Sparrow discusses - let it be naturalised or theolo-
gised are certainly great places to get lost in an obscure academic maze they seem
peculiar choices to the outside observer. If phenomenology is to be naturalised
why not simply embrace neuroscience outright and use the word phenomenology
is a quite direct manner: description of internal mental states and nothing more
besides. Why the need to integrate into that which, in essence, your tradition was
designed to disarticulate? And as for theology, well if you can see God or saturated
being then tell me, to riff on the examiner in Sparrows anecdote, when either ap-
pears (EP, 27). The book will prove most useful to those trapped in the transition

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period between their phenomenological training and their exposure to the various
new forms of continental realism. If the decision is whether phenomenology has a
method adequate to theorising the world today, one wherein adopting naturalistic
advances are no longer verboten within continental circles, or where the embargo
on metaphysics has been lifted, then I believe Sparrow, though he may not say it
so directly himself, has answered with a decisive no.
There is nothing gleeful to be found in this no. If the end of phenomenology
is upon us it is an end in the manner of the rise and fall of German Idealism. An
original innovation (Kantian transcendental idealism, Husserlian phenomenology)
is mined for insights by increasingly brilliant followers whose further innovations
reveal gaps and fissures that ultimately lead to the Frostian fork in the road (EP,
188). You can continue to operate with the knowledge that, at root, fundamental
methodological questions blight your chosen approach though still seems to work,
even if only in a quasi-zombie state where, for sure, the patient is alive but nobody
seems to quite know why (EP, 187). Or you can gamble and make a switch. If there
are better methodological options, say in forms of naturalism or metaphysics, then
the decision is legitimised to abandon the phenomenological ship.
Whatever the case may be one subtle thread that clearly haunts Sparrows text
needs mentioning. Is there within the topics of the subtitle, metaphysics and the
new realism, or to put it more directly, is there within speculative realism, a similar
fate in store? Bound only by the negative method of anti-correlationism specula-
tive realism begins explicitly as a style of doing philosophy. The vagaries of calling
it an umbrella term, a family resemblance, a community, an attitude and so on con-
tinue to blight it. Sparrow briefly touches on this dilemma in his closing remarks
and reminds us, no doubt with what has come before with phenomenology in
mind, that speculative realisms methodological requirements, and consequently
its meaning, remain to be decided (EP, 190). This complicates the switch from
phenomenology, which proposes a method but fails to deliver it, to speculative
realism, which offers a plurality of methods in the process of being fleshed-out.
This is not a terrible place for young philosophers to be. Within the options
provided, and there are, of course, more, one can set about a revival of a more
robust phenomenological method or pursue the task of hardening emerging meth-
ods in the new continental realisms. Seen in a certain light this is not a book about
ends, but about beginnings.

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