Dimensions
156 x 234 x 14mm
'Post-Continental Philosophy' examines the shift in Continental thought over the last ten years through the work of four central figures, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Michel Henry, and Francois Laruelle. Though they follow seemingly different methodologies and agendas, each insist upon the need for a return to the category of immanence if Philosophy is to have any future at all. Rejecting both the German phenomenological tradition of transcendence (of the Ego, Being, Consciousness, Alterity, or Flesh), as well as the French post-structuralist valorisation of language, they instead take the immanent categories of biology (Deleuze), mathematics (Badiou), affectivity (Henry), and axiomatic science (Laruelle) as focal points for a renewal of philosophy. Consequently, Continental Philosophy is taken in a new direction that engages with naturalism with a refreshingly critical and non-reductive approach to the sciences of life, set-theory, embodiment, and knowledge. Hand in hand with this seriousness towards science and the natural world, is a reawakened appetite and aptitude for metaphysics, once this is understood as immanent and processual rather than as a transcendental thought of unchanging ideals. Taken together, these strategies amount to a rekindled faith in the possibility of Philosophy as a worldly and challenging form of thinking.
In the light of this shift, John Mullarkey provides a metaphilosophical analysis of these new philosophies of immanence, teasing out their internal differences (which sometimes emphasise the virtual, sometimes the actual, are sometimes materialist, sometimes vitalist), as well as their shared potential for radicalising the practice of philosophy in Europe. 'Post-Continental Philosophy' is a concise and timely assessment of the current transitional state in which Continental thought finds itself, a state which is both troubling and promising, as well as prescriptive for the future of Continental Philosophy.
