Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Catherine Malabou, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour: this comparative, critical analysis shows the promises and perils of new French philosophy's reformulation of the idea of the human.
Synopsis
A comparative critique of the human in Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Catherine Malabou, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour
Contemporary French philosophy is laying fresh claim to the human. Through a series of independent, simultaneous initiatives, arising in the writing of diverse current French thinkers, the figure of the human is being transformed and reworked.
Christopher Watkin draws out both the promises and perils inherent in these attempts to rethink humanity's relation to 'nature' and 'culture', to the objects that surround us, to the possibility of social and political change, to ecology and even to our own brains. This comparative assessment makes visible for the first time one of the most important trends in French thought today.
Synopsis
Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Catherine Malabou, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour: this new generation of French philosophers is laying fresh claim to the human. Across a number of new strains of philosophy, they are rethinking humanity's relationships: to 'nature' and 'culture', to the objects that surround us, to the possibility of social and political change, to ecology and even to our own brains.
Christopher Watkin draws out both the promises and perils of these new philosophies. And he shows just how high the stakes are for our technologically advanced but socially atomised and ecologically vulnerable society.