The Democracy of Objects by Levi R. Bryant

Bryant, Levi R.

ISBN 10: 1607852047 / ISBN 13: 9781607852049

Published by Open Humanities Press, 2011

Quite clean and completely unmarked, with strong binding and just light shelfwear. Many post-its used throughout. Photos available. We ship daily. Expedited shipping available! (Heavy books & sets may require extra shipping charges.). Seller Inventory # AD3319

Synopsis:

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. By way of systems theory and cybernetics, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he integrates the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. This work will be of great interest to Continental philosophers, ecologists, cultural theorists, media theorists, and those following recent developments in the thought of speculative realists.

About the Author: Levi R. Bryant is a former psychoanalyst and professor of philosophy at Collin College outside of Dallas, Texas. He is the author of Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence (Northwestern University Press, 2008) and co-editor, along with Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman of The Speculative Realism: Continental Materialism and Realism (Re.Press, 2010). He has written numerous articles on Deleuze, Badiou, Lacan, and Žižek, and has written widely on social and political thought, cultural theory, and media theory at his blog Larval Subjects.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Democracy of Objects by Levi R. Bryant
Publisher: Open Humanities Press
Publication Date: 2011
Binding: paperback
Condition: Very Good