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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.
List of contents
Introduction
Part I
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 II
THIS IS NOT THE EARTH!
The Philosopher is the Geometer
The Deserted.
The Pathologists Of The Earth
Become A Target
Part III
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 IV
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
About the author
Rick Dolphijn is Associate Professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands; an Honorary Professor at Hong Kong University (2017-2023), Hong Kong; and a Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona (2019-2020), Spain. He is author of
Foodscapes: towards a Deleuzian Ethics of Consumption (2004),
New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (with Iris van der Tuin) (2012) and edited (with Rosi Braidotti) T
his Deleuzian Century: Art, Activism, Life (2014) and
Philosophy After Nature (2017). His most recent book is
Michel Serres and the Crises of the Contemporary (Bloomsbury 2018).
Summary
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.
