Offers a new theory of history through an original reading of Lucretius' De Rerum NaturaFor Lucretius, history means something surprisingly different than we ordinarily think. Instead of thinking of history in terms of time, he thought of it in terms of motion. This book unpacks the implications of this unique kinetic philosophy of history. In the final volume of his trilogy on De Rerum Natura, Thomas Nail argues that in books five and six, Lucretius described a world born to die. What does it mean to live in such a world? De Rerum Natura provides a guidebook to answering this question.

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes-from global tourism to undocumented labor-have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Tells a new history of materialism from prehistory to the present that resists stasis, heirarchy and domination Traces a lineage of thinkers who have philosophically integrated ideas of matter, motion, indeterminacy, relationality and process Discusses thinkers drawn from the ancient to the modern from the Bronze Age to quantum physics who each offer their own kind of evidence for a world without metaphysics or hierarchy Shows that the established hierarchies that govern Western thought and society are in fact contingent and performative there is no ontologically legitimate justification for social, aesthetic or scientific domination Thomas Nail traces an alternative history of ancient and modern thinkers who share a radically different understanding of the nature of matter and motion compared to the rest of the Euro-Western tradition. From Archaic Greek poetry and Bronze Age Minoan religion to the Roman poet Lucretius, and from German philosopher Karl Marx and English writer Virginia Woolf to contemporary physicists Carlo Rovelli and Karen Barad, Nail identifies a minor tradition of what he calls kinetic materialism and its three central ideas: indeterminacy, relationality and process. For the most part, Western thinkers have considered matter and motion to be inferior to more formal and static principles. Philosophers placed metaphysical categories such as eternity, God, the soul, forms and essences at the 'top' of a hierarchy that secured and ordered the movement at the bottom. This has real consequences in our world. By placing stasis above motion, this hierarchy places form above matter, life above death, God above humans, humans above nature, men above women, white skin above brown skin, the first world over the third world, citizens above migrants, straight above queer The result? Patriarchy, capitalism, racism, homophobia, ecocide. Nail seeks to undermine this inherited hierarchy and the notion that matter and motion are inferior. There are no fixed authorities. This new history of matter and motion leaves the good life up to us, whoever we may become.

Human suffering, the fear of death, war, poverty, ecological destruction and social inequality: almost 2,000 ago Lucretius proposed an ethics of motion as simple and stunning solution to these ethical problems. Thomas Nail argues that Lucretius was the first to locate the core of all these ethical ills in our obsession with stasis, our fear of movement and our hatred of matter. Instead of trying to transcend nature with our minds, escape it with our immortal souls and dominate it with our technologies, Lucretius was perhaps the first in the Western tradition to forcefully argue for a completely materialist, immanent and naturalistic ethics based on moving well with and as nature. If we want to survive and live well on this planet, Lucretius taught us, our best chance is not to struggle against nature but to embrace it and facilitate its movement.

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.

Tells a new history of materialism from prehistory to the present that resists stasis, heirarchy and domination Traces a lineage of thinkers who have philosophically integrated ideas of matter, motion, indeterminacy, relationality and process Discusses thinkers drawn from the ancient to the modern from the Bronze Age to quantum physics who each offer their own kind of evidence for a world without metaphysics or hierarchy Shows that the established hierarchies that govern Western thought and society are in fact contingent and performative there is no ontologically legitimate justification for social, aesthetic or scientific domination Thomas Nail traces an alternative history of ancient and modern thinkers who share a radically different understanding of the nature of matter and motion compared to the rest of the Euro-Western tradition. From Archaic Greek poetry and Bronze Age Minoan religion to the Roman poet Lucretius, and from German philosopher Karl Marx and English writer Virginia Woolf to contemporary physicists Carlo Rovelli and Karen Barad, Nail identifies a minor tradition of what he calls kinetic materialism and its three central ideas: indeterminacy, relationality and process. For the most part, Western thinkers have considered matter and motion to be inferior to more formal and static principles. Philosophers placed metaphysical categories such as eternity, God, the soul, forms and essences at the 'top' of a hierarchy that secured and ordered the movement at the bottom. This has real consequences in our world. By placing stasis above motion, this hierarchy places form above matter, life above death, God above humans, humans above nature, men above women, white skin above brown skin, the first world over the third world, citizens above migrants, straight above queer The result? Patriarchy, capitalism, racism, homophobia, ecocide. Nail seeks to undermine this inherited hierarchy and the notion that matter and motion are inferior. There are no fixed authorities. This new history of matter and motion leaves the good life up to us, whoever we may become.

Karl Marx is the most historically foundational and systematic critic of capitalism to date, and the years since the 2008 financial crisis have witnessed a rebirth of his popular appeal. In a world of rising income inequality, right-wing nationalisms, and global climate change, people are again looking to the father of modern socialism for answers. As this book argues, every era since Marx's death has reinvented him to fit its needs. There is not one Marx forever and for all time. There are a thousand Marxes. As Thomas Nail contends, one of the most significant contributions of Marx's work is that it treats theory itself as a historical practice. Reading Marx is not just an interpretative activity but a creative one. As our historical conditions change, so do the kinds of questions we pose and the kinds of answers we find in Marx's writing. This book is a return to the writings of Karl Marx, including his under-appreciated dissertation, through the lens of the pressing philosophical and political problems of our time: ecological crisis, gender inequality, colonialism, and global mobility. However, the aim of this book is not to make Marxism relevant by "applying" it to contemporary issues. Instead, Marx in Motion, the first new materialist interpretation of Marx's work, treats Capital as if it were already a response to the present. Thomas Nail argues that Marx was a new materialist avant la lettre. He argues that Marx did not believe history was determined, or that matter was passive, or that humans were separate or superior to nature. Marx did not even have a labor theory of value. Marxists argue that new materialists lack a sufficient political and economic theory, and new materialists argue that Marx's materialism is human-centric and mechanistic. This book aims to solve both problems by proposing a new materialist Marxism.

We live in an age of the mobile image. The world today is absolutely saturated with analog and digital images of all kinds circulating around the world at an incredible rate. The movement of the image has never been more extraordinary than it is today. This recent kinetic revolution of the image has hitherto unconsidered consequences not only for the way we think about contemporary art and aesthetics but also for art history as well. Responding to this historical moment, Theory of the Image offers a fresh new aesthetics and history of art from the perspective of this epoch-defining mobility. The image has been understood in many ways, but rarely, if ever, has it been understood to be, primarily and above all, in motion. This original approach is what defines Theory of the Image and what allows it to offer the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition. In this book, Thomas Nail further develops his larger philosophy of movement into a comprehensive "kinesthetics" of the moving image from prehistory to the present. The book concludes with a vivid analysis of the contemporary digital image and its hybridity, ultimately outlining new territory for research and exploration across aesthetics, art history, cultural theory, and media studies.

Despite - and perhaps because of - increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

Thomas Nail approaches the theory of objects historically in order to tell a completely new story in which objects themselves are the true agents of scientific knowledge. They are processes, not things. This is the first history of science and technology, from prehistory to the present, illuminating the agency, knowledge and mobility of objects.

Thomas Nail approaches the theory of objects historically in order to tell a completely new story in which objects themselves are the true agents of scientific knowledge. They are processes, not things. This is the first history of science and technology, from prehistory to the present, illuminating the agency, knowledge and mobility of objects.

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 yearsThomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book 'De Rerum Natura'.This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads 'De Rerum Natura' to offer us a new Lucretius a Lucretius for today.Key FeaturesA new materialist, quantum and feminist interpretation of LucretiusArgues the original and provocative thesis that Lucretius was not an atomist but rather the first philosopher of motionThe most profound revision of how we read Lucretius since Michel Serres' 'The Birth of Physics' (1977)

Human suffering, the fear of death, war, poverty, ecological destruction and social inequality: almost 2,000 ago Lucretius proposed an ethics of motion as simple and stunning solution to these ethical problems. Thomas Nail argues that Lucretius was the first to locate the core of all these ethical ills in our obsession with stasis, our fear of movement and our hatred of matter. Instead of trying to transcend nature with our minds, escape it with our immortal souls and dominate it with our technologies, Lucretius was perhaps the first in the Western tradition to forcefully argue for a completely materialist, immanent and naturalistic ethics based on moving well with and as nature. If we want to survive and live well on this planet, Lucretius taught us, our best chance is not to struggle against nature but to embrace it and facilitate its movement.Lucretius II is the second installment in Thomas Nail's transformative reading of Lucretius' didactic poem De Rerum Natura, which can be read individually or as a trilogy. Lucretius I covered books 1 and 2 of De Rerum Natura and looked at Lucretius' ontology; this volume covers books 3 and 4 and Lucretius' ethics. The third and final volume will cover books 5 and 6."

Deleuze and Foucault had a long, complicated and productive relationship, in which each was at various times a significant influence on the other. This collection combines 3 original essays by Deleuze and Foucault, in which they respond to each other's work, with 16 critical essays by key contemporary scholars working in the field. The result is a sustained discussion and analysis of the various dimensions of this fascinating relationship, which clarifies the implications of their philosophical encounter.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes-from global tourism to undocumented labor-have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Presents an account of the concept of revolution in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Much has been written on Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy in the last 15 years. Now, Returning to Revolution is the first full length work to date on their central concept of revolution and its emergence alonside the most influential revolutionary movement of the 21st century: Zapatismo. Outlines the theoretical and practical origins of the return to political revolution and provides the first full length account of Deleuze and Guattari's relationship to a concrete revolutionary struggle.

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 yearsThomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book 'De Rerum Natura'.This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads 'De Rerum Natura' to offer us a new Lucretius a Lucretius for today.Key FeaturesA new materialist, quantum and feminist interpretation of LucretiusArgues the original and provocative thesis that Lucretius was not an atomist but rather the first philosopher of motionThe most profound revision of how we read Lucretius since Michel Serres' 'The Birth of Physics' (1977)

More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; and yet, we lack a unifying theory which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time. Why, when movement has always been central to human societies, did a philosophy based on movement never take hold? This book finally overturns this long-standing metaphysical tradition by placing movement at the heart of philosophy. In doing so, Being and Motion provides a completely new understanding of the most fundamental categories of ontology from a movement-oriented perspective: quality, quantity, relation, modality, and others. It also provides the first history of the philosophy of motion, from early prehistoric mythologies up to contemporary ontologies. Through its systematic ontology of movement, Being and Motion provides a path-breaking historical ontology of our present.

Despite - and perhaps because of - increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; and yet, we lack a unifying theory which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time. Why, when movement has always been central to human societies, did a philosophy based on movement never take hold? This book finally overturns this long-standing metaphysical tradition by placing movement at the heart of philosophy. In doing so, Being and Motion provides a completely new understanding of the most fundamental categories of ontology from a movement-oriented perspective: quality, quantity, relation, modality, and others. It also provides the first history of the philosophy of motion, from early prehistoric mythologies up to contemporary ontologies. Through its systematic ontology of movement, Being and Motion provides a path-breaking historical ontology of our present.

Offers a new theory of history through an original reading of Lucretius' De Rerum NaturaFor Lucretius, history means something surprisingly different than we ordinarily think. Instead of thinking of history in terms of time, he thought of it in terms of motion. This book unpacks the implications of this unique kinetic philosophy of history. In the final volume of his trilogy on De Rerum Natura, Thomas Nail argues that in books five and six, Lucretius described a world born to die. What does it mean to live in such a world? De Rerum Natura provides a guidebook to answering this question.