By Muriel Combes
Gilbert Simondon (1924--1989), some of the most influential modern French philosophers, released merely 3 works: L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (The person and its physico-biological genesis, 1964) and L'individuation psychique et collective (Psychic and collective individuation, 1989), either drawn from his doctoral thesis, and Du mode d'existence des objets concepts (On the mode of life of technical gadgets, 1958). it truly is this final paintings that introduced Simondon into the general public eye; therefore, he has been thought of a "thinker of technics" and pointed out frequently in pedagogical stories on instructing know-how. but Simondon was once a thinker whose pursuits lay in an in-depth renewal of ontology as a technique of individuation--that is, how participants come into being, persist, and rework. during this obtainable but rigorous creation to Simondon's paintings, Muriel Combes is helping to bridge the space among Simondon's account of technics and his philosophy of individuation. a few thinkers have discovered concept in Simondon's philosophy of individuation, significantly Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Combes's account, first released in French in 1999, is without doubt one of the in simple terms reviews of Simondon to seem in English. Combes breaks new floor, exploring an ethics and politics sufficient to Simondon's speculation of preindividual being, contemplating in the course of the lens of transindividual philosophy what shape a nonservile relation to expertise may possibly take at the present time. Her e-book is vital analyzing for an individual who desires to comprehend Simondon's paintings.
Read Online or Download Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual PDF
Best social philosophy books
Latin American Philosophy: Currents, Issues, Debates
The 10 essays during this full of life anthology stream past a in simple terms ancient attention of Latin American philosophy to hide contemporary advancements in political and social philosophy in addition to options within the reception of key philosophical figures from the ecu Continental culture. issues comparable to indigenous philosophy, multiculturalism, the philosophy of race, democracy, postmodernity, the function of ladies, and the location of Latin the USA and Latin american citizens in an international age are explored through awesome philosophers from the area.
Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study
Collaborative initiatives - An Interdisciplinary examine offers examine in disciplines starting from schooling, Psychotherapy and Social paintings to Literacy and anti-poverty venture administration to Social circulation reports and Political technological know-how. the entire contributions are unified via use of the idea that of 'project'.
Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy
This edited assortment specializes in the ethical and social dimensions of ignorance―an undertheorized class in analytic philosophy. members deal with such matters because the relation among lack of knowledge and deception, lack of know-how as an ethical excuse, lack of knowledge as a criminal excuse, and the relation among lack of information and ethical personality.
- The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory
- Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women
- Contributions to L'Année Sociologique
- An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology and Counselling: Pathways of Mindfulness-Based Therapies
Additional info for Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual
Example text
To resolve the problem of knowledge, working against the Kantian hylomorphism that separates a priori forms from the sensibility of matter given a posteriori, Simondon situates himself before the rupture between the object to be known and the subject of knowledge. Indeed, in his view, knowledge is not grounded on the side of the subject any more than it is on the side of the object. As he writes in L'individuation psychique et col lective: "If knowledge rediscovers the lines that allow for interpreting the world according to stable laws, it is not because there exist in the subject a priori forms of sensibility, whose coherence with brute facts coming from the world would be inexplicable; it is because being as subject and being as object arise from the same primitive reality, and the thought that now appears to institute an inexplicable relation between object and subject in fact prolongs this initial individuation; the conditions o f possibility of knowl edge are in fact the causes o f existence of the individuated being" (IPC, 127; IL, 264).
As he pushes his inquiry into the limits of reason as far as possible, Simondon shows signs of complete confidence in the power of thought. And yet, we could not possibly be farther from the Hegelian postulate wherein only the rational is effective within being. If it began with such a postulate, analogi cal knowledge would not be able to grasp the "real" operations in which structures are constituted, but would stop at the apprehension of relations that are only conceptual. If we apprehend the movement of being on the basis of the identity of the rational and the real, we grasp a movement that is "only" that of spirit.
Consistency and Constitution Simondon's examination of the individuation of physical beings leads him to draw on references from the experimental sciences; yet it quickly becomes apparent that his step in this direction, toward the experimen tal sciences, is motivated by the fact that the knowledge they provide is knowledge of relation and thus "can only provide philosophical analysis with a being consisting in relations" (IG, 82; IL, 84). There are two ways of understanding the fact that the individual consists in relations: on the one hand, a physical individual is nothing other than the relation or relations (a single individuating operation or reiterated individuations) that have given birth to it by making it a bridge between disparate orders of being; on the other hand, in keeping with the second meaning of the verb to consist, we gather that relation gives consistency to being, and any physical indi vidual acquires its consistency, that is, its reality, from its relational activity.