The Philosophy of Matter: A Meditation

Description

The Philosophy of Matter is a journey in thinking through the material fate of the earth itself; its surfaces and undercurrrents, ecologies, environments and irreparable cracks. With figures such as Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres as philosophical guides and writings on New Materialism, Posthumanism and Affect Theory as intellectual context, Rick Dolphijn proposes a radical rethinking of some of the basic themes of philosophy: subjectivity, materiality, body (both human and otherwise) and the act of living. This rethink is a work of imagination and meditation in order to conceive of “another earth for another people”. It is a homage to courageous thinking that dares to question the religious, capitalist and humanist realities of the day. A poetic philosophy of how to live in troubling times when even the earth beneath us feels unstable, Dolphijn offers a way to think about the world with depth, honesty and glimpses of hope. Cover Contents Acknowledgements Permissions PART ONE Imagining the Undercurrent I Don’t Know Where This Is Going but I Know Where to Begin… The history of Cartesianism is the history of critique Why our world demands a different form of thinking Rewriting humanism Imagination is what matters – it nurtures everything PART TWO This is not the Earth! The philosopher is the geometer The Deserted … The pathologists of the earth Become a target PART THREE I Can See Something I am not a person, right? Shadows in shadows The cracks of the contemporary The wound (I was born to embody) PART FOUR Geometer, Show Me a New Earth The geometer starts from a physics beyond critique The geometers first axiom: A body is that which folds The geometer maps that which is savage, irregular, alive The geometer maps how art objects Earth – You are everywhere References Index