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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.
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.
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.
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Matter and Motion
Thomas Nail
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R458
Discovery Miles 4 580
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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