Theory of Identities

by Alyosha Edlebi (Translator)

Overview

François Laruelle proposes a theory of identity rooted in scientific notions of symmetry and chaos, emancipating thought from the philosophical paradigm of Being and reconnecting it with the real world. Unlike most contemporary philosophers, Laruelle does not believe language, history, and the world shape identity but that identity determines our relation to these phenomena.

Both critical and constructivist, Theory of Identities finds fault with contemporary philosophy's reductive relation to science and its attachment to notions of singularity, difference, and multiplicity, which extends this crude approach. Laruelle's new theory of science, its objects, and philosophy, introduces an original vocabulary to elaborate the concepts of determination, fractality, and artificial philosophy, among other ideas, grounded in an understanding of the renewal of identity.

Laruelle's work repairs the rift between philosophical and scientific inquiry and rehabilitates the concept of identity that continental philosophers have widely criticized. His argument positions him clearly against Deleuze, Badiou, the new materialists, and other thinkers who stray too far from empirical approaches that might revitalize philosophy's practical applications.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231541459
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/24/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

François Laruelle is emeritus professor at the University of Paris Ouest, Nanterre La Défense (Paris X), and lectures at the Collège International de Philosophie. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy (2011) and Christo-Fiction: The Ruins of Athens and Jerusalem (Columbia, 2015), and is the director of L'Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale.

Alyosha Edlebi is a translator and Ph.D. candidate at Yale University. He has published articles on Deleuze, Laruelle, Meillassoux, and Simondon in Deleuze Studies, Theory Culture&Society, Qui Parle, and Parrhesia.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition: Retrospection (2014)
Preface to the French Edition (1992)
Introduction: Science, Identity, Fractality
Part 1: The Essence of Science
1. Science: A Nonepistemological Description
2. Non-philosophy: A Scientific Reform of the Understanding
Part 2: Theory of Generalized Fractality
3. Of Determination-in-the-Last-Instance as Destruction of the Principle of Sufficient Determination
4. The Concepts of Generalized Fractality and Chaos
Part 3: Principles of an Artificial Philosophy
5. Unified Theory of Thought
6. The Concept of an Artificial Philosophy
7. The Fractal Modeling of Philosophy
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Aiming to provide a new practice of philosophy by engaging with scientific concepts in a philosophical way, Theory of Identities opens up a space for truly interdisciplinary projects to develop. Rather than paying mere lip service to interdisciplinarity, Laruelle practices it here in the midst of profound reflections on identity, science, and ethics.

Anthony Paul Smith

Theory of Identities constitutes the most illustrative proof that 'non-philosophy is a synthesis of quantum theory and Marxism.' It is a testimony of the dense complexity of Laruelle's genius combining methodologically uncompromising scientific rigor and transgressiveness of a mystic's glance into what most of us would choose to avert our eyes from: the point where the comfort of neurosis ceases to exist, which is also the place where neurosis reestablishes itself.

Katarina Kolozova

This excellent translation of Theory of Identities will be invaluable to anyone who wants to understand Laruelle's nonstandard epistemology.

John Mullarkey