Bøger af Charles William Johns

Hegel and Speculative Realism has two main objectives. Firstly, to assess the speculative realist formulations of the real regarding the ¿withdrawn¿ object, radical contingency, the absolute register of extinction, and the current interest in ¿powers philosophy¿, with special attention to their possible relation to the absolute scope of Hegelian philosophy. Secondly, to invite the reader to reconsider Hegel in a new way; uncovering rare insights into his thoughts on astronomy, actuality, the concrete and non-being. Johns¿ inclination is to not mistake the necessary path to the absolute as the only path. Johns argues that Hegel describes the unique trajectory of the dialectical relationship between Nature and Idea as a Spirit oriented by both logical and physical (spatio-temporal) dimensions. Johns reads this as a theory of singularity and makes the bold claim that there may be other paths not taken by the Hegelian spatio-temporal path synonymous withthe dialectic; synthesis, sublation and unfolding. In-fact, speculative philosophy should not be satisfied to study only ¿what exists¿ but also what ¿could exist¿ or what it means to ¿inexist¿ and should entertain multiple modes of potential becoming between Hegel¿s initial triad of logical categories; Being, Non-Being and Becoming.

Following in a proud tradition of imaginative interpreters of Nietzsche, Johns develops his own panpsychist edition of the German philosopher ¿ one whose ¿drives¿ are not merely psychic, but rather constitutive of all relations between entities. What past philosophers have called ¿objects¿ do not simply wait there, politely cueing for humans to arrive on the scene and describe them. On the contrary, they are the firmament from which all rational agency springs ¿the very fact that one can think is only the by-product of a contingent chain of materially dependent evolutionary events ¿ which continue to constantly assail, even puppeteer, the subject¿ effectively annulling any claim we have to mental independence. Does the woman, sipping her latte, choose the latte? Or did the latte ¿ brought to England by an editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and conspicuously advertised in white lettering at the top of the café menu ¿ choose her? Moreover, how will its daily consumption affect her thought? Will it have lasting cognitive implications? Charles William Johns¿ book is one of the finest philosophy books of the year ¿ a gem of the Anglo-­American renaissance in Continental philosophy.

For Johns, the world is in a constant state of being utilised, not merely through humans but through objects and their relations, and not only on a macro scale but on a micro scale (described by the theories of quantum physics).The object then becomes a locus of use, yet, importantly, one that can never be reduced to relations alone.

The personal essays collected in this volume examine such issues as assimilation, the philosophy of neurosis, aneurysmal philosophy, and the connection between Hegel and Neurosis, among others.