One of the four contributors to the 2007 Goldsmiths conference on Speculative Realism,[1] Ray Brassier occupies an important place among a diverse group of thinkers who have argued for realist alternatives to philosophies of subjectivity, finitude and deconstruction that had been core to post-Kantian continental philosophy for some years. Some of these new realisms have sought to combat the reflex anti-scientism of the established traditions. Brassier’s book Nihil Unbound (2007) argues that nihilism—the modern crisis of meaning—is an emancipatory consequence of scientific reason; one which can inform a transcendental realism predicated on the ultimate cosmic extinction of nature. Brassier’s later work engages more closely with analytical variants of Kantianism—particularly via readings of the work of Wilfred Sellars—aiming to develop a naturalism that reconciles materialism with a commitment to truth, conceptual normativity and abstraction.