Ep. 384: Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (Part One)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (2018). What counts as an entity in the world? Harman includes not just physical objects, but fictional objects, "sensual objects," and even events, which you might have thought were the alternative to objects.
With this promiscuous ontology comes a strange theory of causality whereby no real object touches another real object, and an epistemology that involves us having no knowledge of real objects at all, though Harman's theory art gives us a back-door to make up for this deficiency, and philosophy itself ends up sharing in these properties of art.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Partially Examine Life, a podcast by some guys who at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. |
| 0:14.2 | Our question for episode 384 is, what is there? |
| 0:18.0 | And we read the introduction plus chapters one, two, and four of Grand Harmon's |
| 0:22.1 | 2018 book, Object-oriented ontology, a new theory of everything. |
| 0:27.3 | For more information about the text and the podcast, please see Partially ExamineLife.com. |
| 0:31.9 | This is Mark Linsmeyer, ontographically self-presenting in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 0:36.0 | This is Seth Paskin, mediated locally in Austin, Wisconsin. This is Seth Paskin mediated locally in Austin, Texas. |
| 0:40.6 | This is Wesal one, a mid-to-large-sized object who is not reducible to his parts or his whereabouts |
| 0:46.9 | in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 0:49.3 | This is Dylan Casey pentamining in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 0:54.3 | Pentamining? |
| 0:55.2 | Was this a... |
| 0:56.0 | Right. |
| 0:56.5 | There's duo mining, undermining, overmining. |
| 0:58.9 | And pantomimiming? |
| 1:00.3 | I said pentamining. |
| 1:01.5 | Oh, okay. |
| 1:02.2 | Okay. |
| 1:02.8 | I bullshitted buying as well. |
| 1:04.6 | There's no ontographic chart. |
| 1:07.5 | There's no ontographic self-presentation. |
| 1:09.6 | That is pure nonsense. |
... |
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