Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) | Critical Theory Wiki

Introduction

Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is a philosophical movement asserting that objects exist independent of human perception and that all entities—whether rocks, electrons, fictional characters, or empires—exist on equal ontological footing. Against anthropocentrism (privileging humans) and correlationism (assuming reality is always correlated with human thought), OOO proposes flat ontology where no entity has special ontological status. A dust mote and a galaxy, a bacterium and a corporation all exist as objects with their own reality, irreducible to their relations or effects.

Developed primarily by Graham Harman (whose 1999 dissertation Tool-Being founded object-oriented philosophy) and extended by Timothy Morton, Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost, and others, OOO emerged from 2000s-2010s debates about “speculative realism”—various anti-correlationist philosophies arguing we can think reality beyond human access. While speculative realisms diverge significantly, OOO’s distinctive claims include: objects withdraw from total access, essence exceeds relations, aesthetics reveals object-reality, and everything (including ideas, fictions, institutions) is object.

Understanding OOO illuminates contemporary theory’s “ontological turn”—renewed interest in being, materiality, and non-human agency after decades of linguistic/cultural constructivism. It challenges critical theory’s anthropocentrism, offering tools for environmental thought, technology studies, and non-human-centered ethics. Yet OOO remains controversial—criticized for mystifying objects, depoliticizing critique, and celebrating obscurity over clarity. Engaging OOO seriously means confronting questions about reality’s independence from thought, objects’ existence beyond relations, and whether non-human ontology can serve progressive politics.

Key Figures

Related Thinkers:

Graham Harman (1968-present) - Founder, Tool-Being (1999), The Quadruple Object (2011)

Timothy Morton (1968-present) - Hyperobjects, dark ecology, queer ecology

Levi Bryant (1969-present) - Onticology, The Democracy of Objects (2011)

Ian Bogost (1976-present) - Alien phenomenology, Alien Phenomenology (2012)

Quentin Meillassoux (1967-present) - Speculative realism, After Finitude (2006)

📖 Essential Reading: Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican, 2018); Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects (2013)

Philosophical Context

Correlationism and Its Discontents

Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude (2006) diagnosed correlationism as modern philosophy’s fundamental structure. Since Kant, philosophy assumes we can only know things as they appear to us (phenomena) not as they are in themselves (noumena). Reality is always correlated with consciousness—no access to reality independent of our access to it.

This generated philosophical constraints:

Can’t think reality before human consciousness (ancestral time, pre-human universe)
Can’t access things-in-themselves beyond phenomenal appearances
Nature, objects, reality always mediated by human frameworks (concepts, language, culture)

Speculative realism (umbrella term for multiple anti-correlationist positions) emerged at 2007 Goldsmiths conference challenging correlationism. Participants—Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant—shared opposition to correlationism but diverged dramatically in positive positions.

OOO is one speculative realist current, distinguished by:

Asserting objects exist independent of thought (realism)
Claiming all entities are equally real objects (democracy of objects)
Arguing objects withdraw from total access (unknowability)
Treating relations as derived from objects rather than constitutive

Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology

Graham Harman’s OOO develops from idiosyncratic Heidegger reading. Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) distinguished:

Ready-to-hand (Zuhanden): Equipment used transparently without explicit awareness (hammer as tool while hammering) Present-at-hand (Vorhanden): Objects explicitly contemplated as things (broken hammer observed as object)

Heidegger argued ready-to-hand equipment reveals being’s primary mode—holistic involvement in meaningful contexts. Theoretical contemplation (present-at-hand) is derivative, impoverished mode losing practical engagement.

Harman radicalizes this: Heidegger’s ready-to-hand points beyond itself toward objects that never fully appear in any relation, whether practical use or theoretical contemplation. Tools aren’t exhausted by use any more than by theory—they have surplus being, tool-being, exceeding all relations.

This inverts Heidegger. Where Heidegger privileges human practical engagement (Dasein’s being-in-the-world), Harman argues even non-human objects have being-in-the-world. Hammers relate to nails; electrons interact with protons; all objects have their own withdrawing reality independent of human access.

Against Relational Ontology

Most Continental philosophy post-Heidegger emphasized relations—beings are constituted through their relations rather than having intrinsic properties. Structuralism, post-structuralism, actor-network theory, assemblage theory all privilege relations over autonomous entities.

OOO breaks with this. Objects are not bundles of relations—they precede and exceed relations. Cotton isn’t just its relations (to plants, fields, pickers, factories, shirts, wearers) but has object-reality surpassing those relations. If all relations dissolved, cotton would still exist as withdrawn object.

This generates anti-reductionist ontology. Objects can’t be reduced to:

Their physical components (cotton isn’t just cellulose molecules)
Their relations (cotton isn’t just network of agricultural/economic processes)
Their effects (cotton isn’t just what cotton does)
Human concepts/perceptions (cotton exists independently of being known)

Objects have autonomous being—real unity exceeding constituents, relations, and manifestations.

Core Principles

The Quadruple Object

Harman’s systematic ontology (developed across multiple books) posits every object has four-fold structure:

1. Real Object (RO): Withdrawn essence, inaccessible unity 2. Real Qualities (RQ): Object’s intrinsic properties, equally withdrawn 3. Sensual Object (SO): Object as encountered, its phenomenal appearance 4. Sensual Qualities (SQ): Properties of encountered object

These generate four tensions:

Time: RO vs. RQ (essence vs. its qualities)
Space: RO vs. SO (reality vs. appearance)
Eidos: SO vs. SQ (phenomenal unity vs. its shifting qualities)
Essence: SO vs. RO (appearance hints at withdrawn reality)

This complex architecture claims to explain: causation (objects interact via sensual proxies), perception (accessing sensual not real objects), change (shifting relations between object and qualities), and knowledge (approximating but never grasping real objects).

Critics find this baroque, but Harman insists it’s minimal framework capturing object-reality’s complexity.

Withdrawal

OOO’s signature concept: objects withdraw from total access—in relations, perception, knowledge, use. Nothing exhausts object’s reality—not scientific analysis decomposing it, practical use deploying it, aesthetic contemplation appreciating it, or other objects relating to it.

This “weird realism” (Harman’s term) asserts:

Fire relates to cotton (burns it) but doesn’t access cotton’s full reality
Scientific analysis of cotton’s molecular structure doesn’t exhaust cotton
Wearing cotton shirt doesn’t fully encounter cotton itself
Even God couldn’t totally access cotton’s withdrawn essence

Withdrawal isn’t epistemic limit (we happen not to know objects fully) but ontological condition (objects are essentially excessive). This generates objects’ enigmatic character—they’re simultaneously present (we interact with them) and absent (never fully grasped).

Flat Ontology

Flat ontology (term from Manuel DeLanda, adopted by OOO) refuses ontological hierarchies—no entity is more real than others. Atoms aren’t more real than organisms; matter isn’t more fundamental than ideas; physical objects aren’t more real than fictional ones.

This radicality challenges common sense:

Aren’t quarks more fundamental than cats (which are composed of quarks)?
Aren’t material things more real than ideas or fictions?
Don’t wholes reduce to parts?

OOO responds: composition doesn’t determine ontological status. Cats are real objects despite being composed of parts; Sherlock Holmes is real object despite being fictional; Ottoman Empire is real object despite being composed of people, institutions, territories.

Each object exists on same ontological plane—equally real, equally withdrawn, equally irreducible. This democracy of objects de-centers humans philosophically—we’re one type of object among billions, without special ontological privilege.

Allure and Aesthetics

If objects withdraw from direct access, how do we encounter them at all? Harman’s answer: allure—aesthetic experience where objects tantalize us with partial revelation while remaining essentially withdrawn. Art, metaphor, humor glimpse object-reality without capturing it.

Metaphor is paradigmatic: when Shakespeare writes “Juliet is the sun,” neither Juliet nor sun are literally present but their real objects somehow touch across distance. Metaphor reveals objects obliquely, creating temporary fusion hinting at withdrawn reality.

This makes aesthetics primary for ontology—not derivative cultural practice but way reality appears. Art doesn’t represent or construct reality but reveals objects’ partial withdrawal. Consequently, OOO philosophers often engage art, architecture, literature as seriously as traditional philosophy—they’re ontological investigations.

Vicarious Causation

How do withdrawn objects interact? If objects never fully access each other, how does causation work? Harman proposes vicarious causation—objects interact through intermediary sensual proxies, never touching directly.

Fire burns cotton, but real fire never directly contacts real cotton. Instead, sensual images of fire and cotton interact—phenomena, not withdrawn realities. Real objects remain in isolation; only sensual appearances make contact.

This strange claim addresses real problem: if objects are irreducible to relations, how do they relate? Harman’s answer: they don’t directly—relations occur between sensual proxies while real objects remain withdrawn. This explains how objects can interact while retaining independence.

Key Thinkers and Variations

Timothy Morton: Hyperobjects

Timothy Morton extends OOO toward ecology through hyperobjects—entities massively distributed in time/space beyond human comprehension yet viscerally affecting us. Examples: climate change, radioactive plutonium, capitalism, evolution.

Hyperobject characteristics:

Viscous: Stick to beings associated with them (you can’t escape climate, capitalism)
Nonlocal: Exist as totality but only encountered through local manifestations
Temporally undulating: Phase in and out of human timescales
Interobjective: Form relationships between objects, not just objects and humans

Hyperobjects make OOO politically and ecologically relevant—climate change is real object exceeding human access yet demanding response. We can’t fully grasp climate but must act despite incomplete knowledge. This combines OOO’s philosophical realism with environmental urgency.

Levi Bryant: The Democracy of Objects

Levi Bryant’s The Democracy of Objects (2011) systematizes flat ontology and develops machine-oriented ontology. Ontic principle: no difference between object being and object appearing. Objects are what they do—their operations, not hidden essences.

This differs from Harman—Bryant emphasizes objects as machines (producing operations) rather than withdrawn substances. Yet both affirm objects’ autonomous reality and resistance to reduction.

Bryant connects OOO to systems theory, complexity science, and Deleuze—generating eclectic ontology drawing on multiple traditions while maintaining object-oriented commitments.

Ian Bogost: Alien Phenomenology

Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology (2012) popularized OOO for media studies and technology. Bogost proposes alien phenomenology—imagining objects’ experiential perspectives. What’s it like to be ATM, traffic light, email server?

This anthropomorphizing is deliberate provocation. Rather than claiming to truly access objects’ experience (which would violate withdrawal), alien phenomenology performs speculative exercise acknowledging objects’ reality beyond human concerns.

Bogost’s work connects OOO to game studies, design, and digital culture—showing how object-oriented thinking illuminates technical systems, procedural rhetoric, and computational media.

Jane Bennett: Vibrant Matter (Adjacent)

While not strictly OOO, Jane Bennett’s vibrant matter shares commitments. Vibrant Matter (2010) argues nonhuman entities have agency, vitality, and power independent of human meaning. Metals, bacteria, electricity, trash aren’t passive matter awaiting human use but vibrant actants participating in assemblages.

This vital materialism challenges anthropocentrism like OOO but emphasizes assemblages and relations more than Harman would. Bennett’s work shows family resemblances between OOO, new materialism, and actor-network theory despite theoretical differences.

Applications and Extensions

Environmental Thought and Ecology Without Nature

Morton’s Ecology Without Nature (2007) and The Ecological Thought (2010) apply OOO to environmental philosophy. Traditional ecology appeals to “Nature” as pristine realm humans must protect or return to. Morton argues this “Nature” is Romantic construction—imaginary outside permitting distance from ecological reality.

Ecology without nature dispenses with Nature (capitalized, idealized) to think actual ecology—messy, contaminated, strange entanglements of objects. This dark ecology acknowledges no outside—humans are always-already entangled with other objects, can’t return to imagined purity, must navigate compromised reality.

Hyperobjects crystallize this—climate change, mass extinction, ocean acidification aren’t problems “out there” but sticky, viscous realities we’re entangled with. No escape, purification, or return to innocence—only navigating catastrophe we’re complicit in.

Architecture and Design

OOO influenced architecture and design theory—particularly via Harman’s engagement with architects and design theorists. Key insights:

Objects over subjects: Design isn’t just about human users but objects’ agency, materials’ properties, buildings’ effects. Good design respects objects’ withdrawn realities rather than treating them as mere means.

Withdrawal and allure: Buildings withdraw from total apprehension—no perspective captures building fully. Architecture creates allure—partial revelations, tantalizing glimpses of withdrawn reality.

Flat ontology of built environment: Building is object on par with inhabitants, furniture, neighborhood. No hierarchy—architecture must attend to multiple objects’ realities.

Architects like Tom Wiscombe, David Ruy, and studios like CODA incorporated OOO into practice, generating forms exploring object-reality, withdrawal, and non-human perspectives.

Literary and Cultural Studies

Literary scholars apply OOO to texts as withdrawn objects. Texts aren’t transparent vehicles for meaning or effects of historical forces but real objects with autonomous existence. Interpretations never exhaust texts; readings access sensual proxies, not real textual objects.

This generates object-oriented literary criticism—attending to texts’ materiality, excess beyond interpretation, resistance to total analysis. It also enables treating fictional characters as real objects—Hamlet is real object, though fictional, with reality exceeding any interpretation.

Technology and Media Studies

Bogost’s work pioneered OOO’s application to digital media. Algorithms, interfaces, servers, platforms are objects with agency, perspective, and effects beyond human intentions. Understanding technology requires attending to objects’ realities—not just social construction or human use but machines’ own operations.

Procedural rhetoric (Bogost’s concept): computational systems make arguments through their procedures—rules, mechanics, operations. Understanding video games, social media, algorithms requires analyzing them as objects with inherent logics, not just effects or representations.

Art and Aesthetics

OOO-inflected art explores objects’ weird realism—their simultaneous presence and withdrawal. Artists like Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, and Pierre Huyghe create works highlighting objects’ agency, non-human perspectives, and withdrawn realities.

Art is privileged in OOO—not as representation but as revelation. Through allure, metaphor, and indirect presentation, art glimpses object-reality. Consequently, aesthetics isn’t secondary cultural sphere but primary ontological practice.

Critiques and Debates

Mystification and Obscurity

Critics (particularly from materialist and analytic traditions) charge OOO with mystifying objects through obscure terminology and metaphysical speculation. What does “withdrawal” mean concretely? How do we verify it? Isn’t OOO just poetry masquerading as philosophy?

Defenders respond that objects’ reality exceeds empirical verification—science describes objects’ behaviors, effects, and relations but doesn’t capture withdrawing essence. OOO’s speculative character is feature, not bug—it thinks beyond empiricist limitations.

Political Quietism

Left critics worry OOO’s flat ontology depoliticizes—treating humans and nonhumans equally erases power relations, exploitation, and domination. If humans are just objects among objects, how do we ground ethics, justice, or critique?

Moreover, OOO’s withdrawal doctrine seems to forbid strong claims about social reality—if objects withdraw from total access, can we definitively critique capitalism, analyze oppression, or demand justice? Doesn’t OOO’s epistemic humility disable political commitment?

OOO philosophers respond: flat ontology doesn’t erase ethics but reframes it—recognizing nonhuman stakeholders, acknowledging objects’ agency, humbling human exceptionalism. Morton’s hyperobject work shows OOO’s political potential—climate change demands urgent action despite incomplete knowledge.

Relational Ontology’s Rejoinder

Actor-network theorists, assemblage thinkers, and relational ontologists argue OOO’s substance metaphysics is retrograde—returning to pre-modern essentialism after decades showing identity is relational, emergent, and processual.

They argue: cotton exists only in relations—to plants, soil, water, labor, capital, wearers. Remove relations and nothing remains—no mysterious withdrawn essence but merely constituents that are themselves relational. OOO’s withdrawal is metaphysical fiction generating pseudo-problems.

OOO responds: relations presuppose relata—entities that relate. Pure relationality is incoherent—what relates if nothing precedes relations? Objects must have some reality enabling entering relations while exceeding any particular relation.

Anthropomorphism

Critics charge OOO anthropomorphizes objects—attributing perspective, withdrawal, and allure to entities lacking consciousness. Isn’t this projecting human experience onto non-human world?

OOO accepts this but argues it’s unavoidable—any ontology involves analogies from accessible experience. The question isn’t whether we anthropomorphize but whether our anthropomorphism illuminates. OOO’s provocative anthropomorphism (what’s it like to be ATM?) aims to decenter humans by acknowledging objects’ alien realities.

Correlationism Redux?

Paradoxically, OOO might reproduce correlationism. If objects withdraw from all access, how can OOO claim to know this? Isn’t asserting objects’ withdrawal a knowledge claim about reality independent of access—precisely what correlationism says is impossible?

Harman addresses this through indirection—we don’t directly access withdrawal but infer it from objects’ resistance to exhaustive analysis, perpetual excess, and irreducibility. Yet critics maintain this remains speculative metaphysics without justification.