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(no explicit content warning necessary, though there is suggestive language)

We often regard philosophy as dry, useless, abstract, and most of all removed from everyday life, but this could not be more wrong. Philosophy is quite moist and gushy. The scratchiness of a sound. The feeling when your body sticks to your shirt because of sweat. The textures of different candies, and the feeling on your teeth when you eat so many of those sweets you can practically feel them rotting out, are experiences most of us have encountered. Though you have likely not considered their relevance to ontology, that is the area of philosophy that deals with how things exist.

Let's take an example from a modern day living philosopher, rather than a dead famous one with a beard.

American Philosopher Graham Harman has a refreshing spin on some ideas that go all the way back to Ancient Greece. He does not agree with either of the modern day philosophical trends of idealism, or materialism. He thinks objects are real, and are not just accidents of human imagination, or amalgamations of tiny pieces.

Harman says that his philosophy (called Object Oriented Ontology) is not really about objects but really about the tensions between objects and their qualities. He is literally telling the truth, but it is harder to explain his ideas that way, so let’s start in an easier place.

Object Oriented Ontology (OOO, pronounced triple oh) is about the withdrawn nature of objects. When I stare at a soda can I only see its metaphorical surface, or appearance. I am not experiencing its full range of abilities and possibilities. Just by looking at the soda can, I cannot feel the bubbles on my tongue, and I cannot feel the satisfaction of crushing the can underfoot. Therefore, you can never fully do away with this withdrawn potential of the object. The withdrawn real depth is all the parts of an object you are not seeing, even if you know they are there.

This is not a human centered philosophy, because objects and animals have hidden potentials and wild experiences too. Harman uses the example of fire and cotton to explain how even objects can never exhaust eachothers withdrawn depth. If fire burns cotton, then the fire is only accessing the flammability of cotton, not the smell, or the sight of cotton. Think of how a baseball thrown through your neighbor’s window shattering it experiences the fragility of the glass, but not the transparency, because baseballs can’t see.

OOO is about the relationship between appearances and hidden realities. Which are called sensual objects, and real objects respectively. Not to say that sensual objects don’t exist, but that real objects have an internal mystery that sensual ones lack.

The relationship, called a tension, can involve how there is a disconnect between appearance and reality. Yet at the same time as this disconnect occurs, sensual and real objects are necessarily linked to each other. This relationship is the key to seduction, and intimacy. Because seduction relies on something that has not happened yet, or some hidden potential, despite seduction relying on appearances.

The sensual object is the part of the object that is intimately close with the observer. Imagine yourself watching a good movie, totally immersed. actually imagine inside your head yourself immersed in a movie. You are intimately acquainted with your own experience of the movie, and nothing is closer to you than your experience, because you are in the appearance of the movie. You feel each moment of the movie as if it was something that was happening to you. You are touching the sensual object directly, unlike the real object which is removed from experience.

Or think of your intimate relationship with a friend or partner. You can hear them speak, and you can see them. Nothing is more intimate than appearances, because appearances are direct. You cannot connect with something hidden real and deep, without knowledge about it. Appearances are literally close to you on a metaphysical level. Think of the example of the rock thrown through the window, and how the baseball is not close to the transparency of the glass.

Seduction is the second step after the intimacy of appearance. Once you know all about someone, you start to have inside jokes. You know how they act, and you can tell about social cues (which are quite similar to jokes, only they are serious). You become aware of potentials that are not on the surface (appearance), and the intimacy of the surface becomes a hint at potential activity.

For example, your partner is lying on their bed making eye contact with you. What does this appearance signify? Something not totally on the surface. This particular tension, which is a connection between the sensual object and real qualities, is called Eidos by OOO.

If Harman’s philosophy is to be taken seriously then the intimate sensual side of existence is basically half of it. Harman takes art criticism, such as often mocked wine criticism, very seriously. This is because art criticism is concerned with the sensual details of objects. Art does not function without sensuality because art without an observer is not art.

Moreover, the seductive aspect of art has been the most interesting and controversial historically. Art is very powerful and draws people in. Think of each time your favorite TV show has distracted you from your work. Plato believed that art was too seductive and would ruin the rational part of people’s minds. He even believed it ought to be banned.

Seduction (which requires sensual intimacy or our closeness to our own experience or immersion in our own experience), or attraction, is highly important to philosophy, because of how much human beings deal with it.

Human beings are the entities that ethics is concerned with the most. Seduction is relevant to ethics (an area of philosophy), because the whole process of persuasion relies on it. The idea of someone being a good person relies on them not being seduced over to the dark side, like Anakin in Star Wars.

Corruption (which is a type of seduction) is an intimate meaningful experience. When you have your entire worldview changed because of how powerful, sweet, and important to you the temptation is, then you are being changed by an experience.

Imagine a politician being corrupted by money. For the politician everything makes sense at the moment. Chances are the politician starts with small bribes, but moves to greater and greater sums. Eventually they are changed, and seduced. They felt much pleasure from their money, to the point where their original aim is not there (if it ever was). This seduction was a very close and powerful experience, almost close to the point of being blindingly blurry like how when you’re close enough to kiss you cannot see your partner's eyes well. Intimacy with an experience is blinding in comparison to the subtlety of potential.

Philosophy is all about seduction, and experiencing things. Although its writing is admittedly often written by nerds like myself who speak in terms like experience in a dry abstract way, rather than one filled with green life and muddy passion. Anyone interested in philosophy can think of a time when they had become drawn to a specific thinker or an idea without the ability to stop learning. The seductive force is present in dry words also. There is a creative philosophical essay called Breaking Up With Deleuze, in which Eve Tuck talks about her experience reading the dead man’s (French philosopher Gilles Deleuze) books in the way someone would talk about ending a relationship. It is humorous and talks about the anxiety of being influenced by older renowned philosophers.

Whether or not academic philosophers have succeeded at making philosophy seductive, it is still the case that that philosophy has that potential. Often this potential is abused by poorly researched self-help videos, and related effortless articles, but it can also be used for the good. Philosophy is ultimately closer to arts criticism than to physics or mathematics, despite the fact that so many materialists want it to be physics. So it would not be inappropriate for more philosophy to take into account literary value, to prevent the dryness of pages.