Download or read book Towards Speculative Realism written by Graham Harman and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These writings chart Harman's rise from Chicago sportswriter to co-founder of one of Europe's most promising philosophical movements - Speculative Realism. This collection of essays and lectures show the evolution of his object-oriented metaphysics from its early days into an increasingly developed philosophical position.
Download or read book Speculative Realism written by Peter Gratton and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculative realism is one of the most talked-about movements in recent Continental philosophy. It has been discussed widely amongst the younger generation of Continental philosophers seeking new philosophical approaches and promises to form the cornerstone of future debates in the field. This book introduces the contexts out of which speculative realism has emerged and provides an overview of the major contributors and latest developments. It guides the reader through the important questions asked by realism (what can I know? what is reality?), examining philosophy's perennial questions in new ways. The book begins with the speculative realist's critique of 'correlationism', the view that we can never reach what is real beneath our language systems, our means for perception, or our finite manner of being-in-the-world. It goes on to critically review the work of the movement's most important thinkers, including Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Graham Harman, but also other important writers such as Jane Bennett and Catherine Malabou whose writings delineate alternative approaches to the real. It interrogates the crucial questions these thinkers have raised and concludes with a look toward the future of speculative realism, especially as it relates to the reality of time.
Download or read book Speculative Realism written by Graham Harman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 27, 2007, the first Speculative Realism (SR) workshop was held at Goldsmiths, University of London, featuring four young philosophers whose ideas were loosely allied. Over the ensuing decade, the ideas of SR spread from philosophy to the arts, architecture, and numerous disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. SR has been arguably the most influential new current in continental philosophy since the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari found their second wind in the 1990s. But what is SR? This book is the first general overview by one of its original members, focusing on the aesthetic, ethical, ontological, and political themes of greatest importance to the movement. Graham Harman provides a balanced but critical assessment of his original SR colleagues – Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Quentin Meillassoux – along with a clear summary of his own Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). A number of central philosophical questions tie the four chapters together: What exactly is "correlationism," the chief enemy of SR? What are the stakes of philosophical realism, and is such realism better served by mathematics and the natural sciences, or by a broader model of cognitive activity that includes aesthetics? This book covers both the historical and conceptual development of the movement, providing a first-rate introduction for students, aided by helpful end-of-chapter study questions chosen by Harman himself. SR, Harman shows, is a vital and fast-developing field in contemporary philosophy.
Download or read book The Universe of Things written by Steven Shaviro and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the rediscovery of Alfred North Whitehead’s work to the rise of new materialist thought, including object-oriented ontology, there has been a rapid turn toward speculation in philosophy as a way of moving beyond solely human perceptions of nature and existence. Now Steven Shaviro maps this quickly emerging speculative realism, which is already dramatically influencing how we interpret reality and our place in a universe in which humans are not the measure of all things. The Universe of Things explores the common insistence of speculative realism on a noncorrelationist thought: that things or objects exist apart from how our own human minds relate to and comprehend them. Shaviro focuses on how Whitehead both anticipates and offers challenges to prevailing speculative realist thought, moving between Whitehead’s own panpsychism, Harman’s object-oriented ontology, and the reductionist eliminativism of Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier. The stakes of this recent speculative realist thought—of the effort to develop new ways of grasping the world—are enormous as it becomes clear that our inherited assumptions are no longer adequate to describe, much less understand, the reality we experience around us. As Shaviro acknowledges, speculative realist thought has its dangers, but it also, like the best speculative fiction, holds the potential to liberate us from confining views of what is outside ourselves and, he believes, to reclaim aesthetics and beauty as a principle of life itself. Bringing together a wide array of contemporary thought, and evenhandedly assessing its current debates, The Universe of Things is an invaluable guide to the evolution of speculative realism and the provocation of Alfred North Whitehead’s pathbreaking work.
Download or read book The Speculative Turn written by Levi Bryant and published by re.press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the current giants of this generation, this new focus takes numerous different and opposed forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the center of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come.
Download or read book Speculations IV written by Michael Austin and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With this special volume of Speculations, the editors wanted to challenge the contested term "speculative realism," offering scholars who have some involvement with it a space to voice their opinions of the network of ideas commonly associated with the name. Whilst undoubtedly born under speculative realist auspices, Speculations has never tried to be the gospel of a dogmatic speculative realist church, but rather instead to cultivate the best theoretical lines sprouting from the resurgence, in the last few years, of those speculative and realist concerns attempting to break free from some of the most stringent constraints of critique. Sociologist Randall Collins observed that, unlike other fields of intellectual inquiry, "[p]hilosophy has the peculiarity of periodically shifting its own grounds, but always in the direction of claiming or at least seeking the standpoint of greatest generality and importance." If this is the case, to deny that a shift of grounds has indeed become manifest in these early decades of the twenty-first century would be, at best, a sign of a severe lack of philosophical sensitivity. On the other hand, whether or not this shift has been towards greater importance (and in respect to what?) is not only a legitimate but a necessary question to ask.
Download or read book Bells and Whistles written by Graham Harman and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this diverse collection of sixteen essays, lectures, and interviews dating from 2010 to 2013, Graham Harman lucidly explains the principles of Speculative Realism, including his own object-oriented philosophy. From Brazil to Russia, and in Poland, France, Croatia, and India, Harman addresses local philosophical concerns with the energy of a roving evangelist. He reflects on established giants such as Greenberg, Latour, and McLuhan, while refining his differences with such younger authors as Brassier, Bryant, Garcia, and Meillassoux. He speaks to philosophers in Paris, hecklers in New York, media theorists in Berlin, and architects in Curitiba, as object-oriented philosophy consolidates its position as the most widespread form of Speculative Realism. There has never been a more upbeat introduction to one of the most challenging philosophical schools of our time. ,
Download or read book A Thing of This World written by Lee Braver and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-13 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining conceptual rigour and clarity of prose with historical erudition, this book shows how one of the standard issues of analytic philosophy, realism and anti-realism, has also been at the heart of continental philosophy.
Download or read book Weird Realism written by Graham Harman and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Hölderlin was to Martin Heidegger and Mallarmé to Jacques Derrida, so is H.P. Lovecraft to the Speculative Realist philosophers. Lovecraft was one of the brightest stars of the horror and science fiction magazines, but died in poverty and relative obscurity in the 1930s. In 2005 he was finally elevated from pulp status to the classical literary canon with the release of a Library of America volume dedicated to his work. The impact of Lovecraft on philosophy has been building for more than a decade. Initially championed by shadowy guru Nick Land at Warwick during the 1990s, he was later discovered to be an object of private fascination for all four original members of the twenty-first century Speculative Realist movement. In this book, Graham Harman extracts the basic philosophical concepts underlying the work of Lovecraft, yielding a weird realism capable of freeing continental philosophy from its current soul-crushing impasse. Abandoning pious references by Heidegger to Hölderlin and the Greeks, Harman develops a new philosophical mythology centered in such Lovecraftian figures as Cthulhu, Wilbur Whately, and the rat-like monstrosity Brown Jenkin. The Miskatonic River replaces the Rhine and the Ister, while Hölderlin's Caucasus gives way to Lovecraft's Antarctic mountains of madness.
Download or read book The World of Failing Machines written by Grant Hamilton and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World of Failing Machines offers the first full-length discussion of the relationship between speculative realism and literary criticism. In identifying some of the most significant coordinates of speculative-realist thought, this book asks what the implications might be for the study of literature. It is argued that the first casualty might well be the form of the traditional essay.
Download or read book Other Grounds written by David Lindsay and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to get outside your assumptions and know the world for what it is? As the 20th century came to a close, the verdict seemed to be a resounding "no," but in recent years a renaissance in speculative thought has sparked new lines of inquiry into de-centering the human. Other Grounds enters this conversation with a decidedly lively voice and an ambitious project to match. Not only can we believe in a reality uncolored by our imaginations, says Lindsay, we can also experience it.Closely argued yet expansive in its reach, Other Grounds is built on the premise that we are by our very nature de-centered - that more than one agent is at work in the human body, and that this plurality can serve as a gateway to the experience of otherness in general. Leading the reader with a steady hand through the literature on coincident entities, set theory and the kinesthetic work of F.M. Alexander, Lindsay makes the case for the possibility of objects interceding on us from their own grounds. The result is that rare specimen in the annals of critical thought: a book that is as reasoned as it is readable, as sage as it is sardonic, and unmistakably original throughout.TABLE OF CONTENTS //Introduction: You're on the List (Oh, Wait-) - Chapter One: Here Comes Two of You - Chapter Two: A Real Class Act - Chapter Three: Stalking the Wild Implicit - Chapter Four: Personal Effects - Chapter Five: Public Things - Appendix: Greater Than Zero, Less Than Everything
Download or read book Fields of Sense written by Markus Gabriel and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything (the world). He argues that the concept of existence is incompatible with the exist
Download or read book Speculative Realism written by Leon Niemoczynski and published by Kismet Press Llp. This book was released on 2017 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the underlying ideas which have created the constellation of thought commonly referred to as Speculative Realism (SR). In a non-technical style Speculative Realism: An Epitome explores the thought of three contemporary philosophers: Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Iain Hamilton Grant. The book characterizes the milieu in which SR was born and charts how the tendencies of thought created from its birth have diverged into contemporary metaphysics. Readers will gain from the book an understanding how the evolving motion of concepts created by the brief life of SR continue to change speculative philosophy in the contemporary Continental philosophical landscape today. Contents: Introduction - Chapter I: Dead on Arrival - Chapter II: Heirs of Kantian Finitude - Chapter III: After Finitude - Chapter IV: After Nature - Interview with Ray Brassier - Interview with Iain Hamilton Grant About the author: Dr. Leon Niemoczynski is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. His research focuses mainly on the philosophy of nature, especially within the Continental philosophical tradition. He also maintains interests in a diverse range of topics including philosophical ecology, logic and metaphysics, German idealism, aesthetics, animal ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Philosophers most relevant to his current research include Plato, Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Deleuze, and Merleau-Ponty. Niemoczynski is the author of Speculative Naturalism (forthcoming 2018); as co-editor, Animal Experience: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World (Open Humanities Press, 2014) and A Philosophy of Sacred Nature: Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism (Lexington Books, 2014); and Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (Lexington Books, 2011). He currently resides in the Pocono Mountains of Northeastern, Pennsylvania with his wife, Nalina.
Download or read book Speculative Aesthetics written by Robin Mackay and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the planetary media network and of the aesthetic as an enabler of new modes of knowledge. This series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design. From varied perspectives of philosophy, art, and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices. Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is inseparable from its sociotechnical conditions.
Download or read book Philosophy for Militants written by Alain Badiou and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An urgent and provocative account of the modern ‘militant’, a transformative figure at the front line of emancipatory politics. Around the world, recent events have seen the creation of a radical phalanx comprising students, the young, workers and immigrants. It is Badiou’s contention that the politics of such militants should condition the tasks of philosophy, even as philosophy clarifies the truth of our political condition. To resolve the conflicts between politics, philosophy and democracy, Badiou argues for a resurgent communism – returning to the original call for universal emancipation and organizing for militant struggle.
Download or read book Speculative Annihilationism written by Matt Rosen and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-31 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If Levinas and Negarestani raised a child enchanted by the dark, then this is his debut. In this book, Rosen argues that current archaeological theoretic approaches are not up to the task of adequately theorizing exhumation in our present age of extinctions. Speculative Annihilationism attempts to “think thought’s extinction,” suggesting a new ontological ground for archaeology. Combining contemporary work in speculative philosophy, saprophytic dialectics, and Levinasian ethics, Rosen’s “putrefied-thought” explores themes of the unthought and unthinkable, anonymity, otherness, and meaninglessness so that archaeology can be granted a new basis, a new avenue of inquiry at its intersection with extinction.
Download or read book Continental Realism written by Paul J. Ennis and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-16 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy. Pitted against the dominant antirealist and transcendental continental hegemony Ennis argues that continental thinking must establish an alliance between metaphysics, speculation, and realism if we are to truly get back to the things themselves.
