Otherwise than quantum

Abstract

The paper focuses on two problems with Alexander Wendt's unification of physical and social ontology on the basis of quantum theory. Firstly, by endowing social phenomena with an ontological foundation in physical reality defined in quantum terms Wendt risks reducing a plurality of worlds as ‘fields of sense’, ordered by their immanent rules, to the physical world ordered by the laws of quantum theory. Secondly, by defining his quantum social science as an ontology Wendt risks excluding from consideration all that which violates ontological laws, yet may still be said to exist or take place: event, potentiality, and alterity. Although the advantages of a scientific ontology are indisputable, the price we pay for it is a sense of ontological captivity, whereby everything that is definitely is so, being and non-being rigorously distinguished and separated with nothing between them. This captivity may be escaped by supplementing quantum ontology with ethics in the Levinasian sense of ‘otherwise than being’.