The Transcendental Core of Correlationism

In this paper I read Quentin Meillassoux’s critique of correlationism as truly a critique of transcendentalism and the transcendental method. I do so by considering the two correlationist rejoinders that occur in the English edition of Meillassoux’s After Finitude. The first rejoinder is from an idealist and relies on adumbrations for its defence. This reliance on adumbrations will be shown to be itself transcendentally implicated through Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. I then turn to the explicit engagement with the transcendental method that arises from the transcendentalist’s rejoinder. Considered together I hope to convince the reader that the core of correlationism is transcendentalism.