I accepted an invitation to be on the editorial board many months ago, before the editor-in-chief was named, which I learned of by e-mail this morning (the editorial board was not consulted):
I am pleased to announce Prof. Graham Harman as Editor-in-Chief of "Open Philosophy" journal.
Prof. Harman is a central figure in speculative realism. He has written fifteen books (the recent ones: "Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory" (2016), and "Dante's Broken Hammer: The Ethics, Esthetics, and Metaphysics of Love (2016)). In the years 2013-2015 he was listed by ArtReview among the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world. In 2016 he was named by The Best Schools among the 50 most influential living philosophers. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles.
Remarkably, they cite his being listed on the pro-Intelligence Design web site "Best Schools" as evidence of his being a significant philosopher! And let's not forget the observation of Ray Brassier, a philosopher at the American University of Beirut, regarding "speculative realism":
The ‘speculative realist movement’ exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever: actor-network theory spiced with pan-psychist metaphysics and morsels of process philosophy. I don’t believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students. I agree with Deleuze’s remark that ultimately the most basic task of philosophy is to impede stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in a ‘movement’ whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity.
There are so many highly competent scholars and philosophers who now traverse both the Anglophone and Continental traditions in philosophy, it is a shame that this new open access journal should discredit itself by choosing someone so manifestly unserious.
I notified Katarzyna Tempczyk the managing editor for DeGruyter philosophy this morning that I was resigning from the editorial board. I would encourage others to follow suit.
ADDENDUM: The journal's website claims, "The journal does not favour any particular philosophical school, perspective or methodology." Yet Graham Harman has been explicitly hostile to (and is clearly ignorant) of "analytic" philosophy!
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