STRANGE FORMS OF ARGUMENTATION: ON MEILLASSOUX'S DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY

Even though Quentin Meillassoux's philosophy is still in the making, to use Graham Harman's (2015) expression, it has garnered sufficient attention to become the topic of an ever-growing body of specialized literature. Here we wish to make a contribution in that direction. We offer an examination of Meillassoux's definition of philosophy as "the invention of strange forms of argumentation". We compare and contrast this definition to the one that has been offered by Deleuze & Guattari in What is Philosophy? Our examination of Meillassoux's core metaphilosophical ideas will follow the same methodological procedure that he himself outlined in his fictionalization of Deleuze as a pre-Socratic. We contend that his novel interpretative technique, which relies heavily on fictionalization, should be repeatable by other authors. To this end, we evaluate his potential to become a philosophical heir to Alain Badiou. We explain why this may be the case, by positing a fictional situation that we will name "the Continental Expectation", and then we will link that situation to the contents of Meillassoux's philosophy, specifically to his concept of absolute contingency.