
Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism
A Weak Nature Alone
Adrian Johnston(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Published on 30. September 2019
Book
Hardback
396 pages
978-0-8101-4063-9 (ISBN)
Description
Adrian Johnston's trilogy Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism aims to forge a thoroughly materialist yet antireductive theory of subjectivity. In this second volume, A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston focuses on the philosophy of nature required for such a theory. This volume is guided by a fundamental question: How must nature be rethought so that human minds and freedom do not appear to be either impossible or inexplicable within it? Asked differently: How must the natural world itself be structured such that sapient subjects in all their distinctive peculiarities emerged from and continue to exist within this world?
In A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston develops his transcendental materialist account of nature through engaging with and weaving together five main sources of inspiration: Hegelian philosophy, Marxist materialism, Freudian-Lacanian metapsychology, Anglo-American analytic neo-Hegelianism, and evolutionary theory and neurobiology. Johnston argues that these seemingly (but not really) strange bedfellows should be brought together so as to construct a contemporary ontology of nature. Through this ontology, nonnatural human subjects can be seen to arise in an immanent, bottom-up fashion from nature itself.
In A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston develops his transcendental materialist account of nature through engaging with and weaving together five main sources of inspiration: Hegelian philosophy, Marxist materialism, Freudian-Lacanian metapsychology, Anglo-American analytic neo-Hegelianism, and evolutionary theory and neurobiology. Johnston argues that these seemingly (but not really) strange bedfellows should be brought together so as to construct a contemporary ontology of nature. Through this ontology, nonnatural human subjects can be seen to arise in an immanent, bottom-up fashion from nature itself.
Reviews / Votes
"This is a remarkable work of epic proportions, in which Johnston describes the origins of what he calls 'transcendental materialism' in Hegel's proposal that Spirit arises from Nature. Equally significant is the way Johnston enhances Hegel with the best insights from Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Freud, Lenin, Lukacs, Lacan, and Althusser, resulting in a very powerful and highly original 'dialectical naturalism' for our times."- Andrew Cole, author of The Birth of Theory"Adrian Johnston's sweeping project of Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism has hardly any match regarding its ambition, goal, and scope. With a sovereign ease, it crosses all the usual boundaries, taking its cue from both the continental and the analytical traditions, from psychoanalysis and neuroscience, from German idealism and scientific naturalism, from Marxism and poststructuralism. An essential read."- Mladen Dolar, author of A Voice is Nothing More
"Adrian Johnston's trilogy Prolegomena To Any Future Materialism promises to achieve the most important confrontation between continental and analytic philosophy ever written. In this second volume, Johnston pursues the elaboration of a materialist yet nonreductionist theory of subjectivity. He discusses with Hegel, Marx, McDowell, Brandom, and so many others the 'underground current of naturalism' that haunts philosophy today and powerfully outlines a new definition of freedom."- Catherine Malabou, author of What Should We Do With Our Brain?
"Adrian Johnston is one of the most original philosophers of his generation. This second tome of Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism will provide food for thought for many years to come. Who else can combine a defense of Engels's dialectic of nature with Hegel's materialist underside? Who else can leap from Soviet science to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, from Nancy Cartwright to the late Lukacs, or from John McDowell to the canonical Althusser?"- Bruno Bosteels, author of Badiou and Politics
"Adrian Johnston is one of the most innovative and audacious continental philosophers writing today. Over the past decade, he has developed an original theoretical synthesis of remarkable sophistication. This volume is a significant addition to his already impressive body of work."- Ray Brassier, author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction?
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
633 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-4063-9 (9780810140639)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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E-Book
09/2019
1st Edition
Northwestern University Press
€101.99
Available for download
Person
ADRIAN JOHNSTON is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta. He is the author of seven books, including Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive, Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change, and Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume One: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy, all published by Northwestern University Press.
Content
Preface. Repeating Engels: Renewing the Cause of the Materialist Wager for the Twenty-First Century
Introduction: Tales of the Endangered Dead: Historical Essays in an Underground Current of Naturalism
Part I. The Voiding of Weak Nature: The Transcendental Materialist Kernels of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature Chapter 1. Revivifying Hegel: Breathing New Life into Naturphilosophie
2. From Bern to Jena: The Oldest Agenda of Hegelianism
3. The Self-Subversion of Modern Science: Scientific Reason and the Phenomenology of Spirit
4. Real Genesis: From the Natural to the Logical, and Back Again
5. The Dialectics of Impotent Nature: Substance and Subject in the System of the Mature Hegel
Part II. From Scientific Socialism to Socialist Science: The Dialectics of Nature Then and Now
6. The Specter of Engels: The Obscured History of Marxism's Philosophies of Science
7. This is orthodox Marxism: The Shared Materialist Weltanschauung of Marx and Engels
8. The Three Fathers of Naturdialektitk: Engels, Dietzgen, Lenin
9. Breaking and Bridging: Althusserian Syntheses of Historical and Dialectical Materialisms
10. Western Marxism's Self-Critique: Lukacs's Final Ontological Verdict
Part III. Negativity Mystical and Material: Privative Causality from Pico Della Mirandola to Lacan
11. The Privation of Science: Lacking Causes
12. There is absence, and then there are absences: Back to Kant, Forward to Lacan, and Onward
13. The Night of the Living World: The Missing Link of the Anorganic
14. Split Brain, Split Subject: Critically Approaching a Possible Lacanian Neuro-Psychoanalysis
15. The Myth of the Non-Given: The Positive Genesis of the Negative
Part IV. Second Natures in Dappled Worlds: Neo-Hegelianism and Philosophy of Science in the Analytic Tradition
16. Lacan avec McDowell: The Unresolved Problem of Naturalism
17. From the Subjectivity of Transcendental Idealism to the Objectivity of Absolute Idealism: Returning to Kant and Hegel
18. Between Bald Naturalism and Rampant Platonism: Relaxing Into McDowell's Third Way
19. More is less: Psychoanalysis, Science, and the Decompletion of First Nature
20. Piebald Naturalism: Freedom in Cartwright's Image of Nature
Postface. Points of Forced Freedom: Eleven (More) Theses on Materialism
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction: Tales of the Endangered Dead: Historical Essays in an Underground Current of Naturalism
Part I. The Voiding of Weak Nature: The Transcendental Materialist Kernels of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature Chapter 1. Revivifying Hegel: Breathing New Life into Naturphilosophie
2. From Bern to Jena: The Oldest Agenda of Hegelianism
3. The Self-Subversion of Modern Science: Scientific Reason and the Phenomenology of Spirit
4. Real Genesis: From the Natural to the Logical, and Back Again
5. The Dialectics of Impotent Nature: Substance and Subject in the System of the Mature Hegel
Part II. From Scientific Socialism to Socialist Science: The Dialectics of Nature Then and Now
6. The Specter of Engels: The Obscured History of Marxism's Philosophies of Science
7. This is orthodox Marxism: The Shared Materialist Weltanschauung of Marx and Engels
8. The Three Fathers of Naturdialektitk: Engels, Dietzgen, Lenin
9. Breaking and Bridging: Althusserian Syntheses of Historical and Dialectical Materialisms
10. Western Marxism's Self-Critique: Lukacs's Final Ontological Verdict
Part III. Negativity Mystical and Material: Privative Causality from Pico Della Mirandola to Lacan
11. The Privation of Science: Lacking Causes
12. There is absence, and then there are absences: Back to Kant, Forward to Lacan, and Onward
13. The Night of the Living World: The Missing Link of the Anorganic
14. Split Brain, Split Subject: Critically Approaching a Possible Lacanian Neuro-Psychoanalysis
15. The Myth of the Non-Given: The Positive Genesis of the Negative
Part IV. Second Natures in Dappled Worlds: Neo-Hegelianism and Philosophy of Science in the Analytic Tradition
16. Lacan avec McDowell: The Unresolved Problem of Naturalism
17. From the Subjectivity of Transcendental Idealism to the Objectivity of Absolute Idealism: Returning to Kant and Hegel
18. Between Bald Naturalism and Rampant Platonism: Relaxing Into McDowell's Third Way
19. More is less: Psychoanalysis, Science, and the Decompletion of First Nature
20. Piebald Naturalism: Freedom in Cartwright's Image of Nature
Postface. Points of Forced Freedom: Eleven (More) Theses on Materialism
Notes
Bibliography
Index