We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. "To think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory." At OOO's heart is the idea that objects—whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human, or non-human—are mutually autonomous. This core idea has significance for nearly every field of inquiry which is concerned in some way with the systematic interaction of objects, and the degree to which individual objects resist full participation in such systems. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out OOO's history, ideas, and impact, taking in art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. From Sherlock Holmes, unicorns, and videogames to Dadaism, Voltaire, and string theory, this book will change the way you understand everything.

Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books)

Computers & Technology

Harman, Graham

Programming

Pelican

Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political (Modern European Thinkers)

Bruno Latour, the French sociologist, anthropologist and long-established superstar in the social sciences is revisited in this pioneering account of his ever-evolving political philosophy. Breaking from the traditional focus on his metaphysics, most recently seen in Harman’s book Prince of Networks, the author instead begins with the Hobbesian and even Machiavellian underpinnings of Latour’s early period encountering his shift towards Carl Schmitt then finishing with his final development into the Lippmann / Dewey debate. Harman brings these twists and turns into sharp focus in terms of Latour’s personal political thinking. Along with Latour’s most important articles on political themes, the book chooses three works as exemplary of the distinct periods in Latour’s thinking: The Pasteurization of France, Politics of Nature, and the recently published An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence, as his conception of politics evolves from a global power struggle between individuals, to the fabrication of fragile parliamentary networks, to just one mode of existence among many others.

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Pluto Press

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making (Speculative Realism)

An in-depth study of the emerging French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux In this expanded edition of his landmark 2011 work on Meillassoux, Graham Harman covers new materials not available to the Anglophone reader at the time of the first edition. Along with Meillassoux's startling book on Mallarmé's poem "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard," Harman discusses several new English articles by Meillassoux, including his controversial April 2012 Berlin lecture and its critique of "subjectalism." Freshly called to a professorship at the Sorbonne, Meillassoux's star has continued to rise. This expanded edition of the only book on Meillassoux remains the best introduction to one of Europe's most promising thinkers.

Edinburgh University Press

An in-depth study of the emerging French philosopher Quentin MeillassouxIn this expanded edition of his landmark 2011 work on Meillassoux, Graham Harman covers new materials not available to the Anglophone reader at the time of the first edition. Along with Meillassoux's startling book on Mallarmé's poem "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard," Harman discusses several new English articles by Meillassoux, including his controversial April 2012 Berlin lecture and its critique of "subjectalism." Freshly called to a professorship at the Sorbonne, Meillassoux's star has continued to rise. This expanded edition of the only book on Meillassoux remains the best introduction to one of Europe's most promising thinkers.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) influenced the work of such diverse thinkers as Sartre and Derrida. In Tool-Being, Graham Harman departs from the prevailing linguistic approach to analytic and continental philosophy in favor of Heideggerian object-oriented research into the secret contours of objects. Written in a colorful style, it will be of interest to anyone open to new trends in present-day philosophy.

Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects

Open Court

In Guerrilla Metaphysics, Graham Harman develops further the object-oriented philosophy first proposed in Tool-Being. Today’s fashionable philosophies often treat metaphysics as a petrified relic of the past, and hold that future progress requires an ever further abandonment of all claims to discuss reality in itself. Guerrilla Metaphysics makes the opposite assertion, challenging the dominant "philosophy of access" (both continental and analytic) that remains quarantined in discussions of language, perception, or literary texts. Philosophy needs a fresh resurgence of the things themselvesnot merely the words or appearances themselves. Once these themes are adapted to the needs of an object-oriented philosophy, what emerges is a brand new type of metaphysicsa "guerrilla metaphysics."

Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things

Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) influence has long been felt not just in philosophy, but also in such fields as art, architecture, and literary studies. Yet his difficult terminology has often scared away interested readers lacking an academic background in philosophy. In this new entry in the Ideas Explained series, author Graham Harman shows that Heidegger is actually one of the simplest and clearest of thinkers. His writings and analyses boil down to a single powerful idea: being is not presence. In any human relation with the world, our thinking and even our acting do not fully exhaust the world. Something more always withdraws from our grasp. As Harman shows, Heidegger understood that human beings are not lucid scientific observers staring at the world and describing it, but instead are thrown into a world where light is always mixed with shadow. The book concludes with a comprehensible discussion of the philosopher’s notoriously opaque concept of the fourfold.

Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing (Ideas Explained)

Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (Theory Redux)

What objects exist in the social world and how should we understand them? Is a specific Pizza Hut restaurant as real as the employees, tables, napkins and pizzas of which it is composed, and as real as the Pizza Hut corporation with its headquarters in Wichita, the United States, the planet Earth and the social and economic impact of the restaurant on the lives of its employees and customers? In this book the founder of object-oriented philosophy develops his approach in order to shed light on the nature and status of objects in social life. While it is often assumed that an interest in objects amounts to a form of materialism, Harman rejects this view and develops instead an “immaterialist” method. By examining the work of leading contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour and Levi Bryant, he develops a forceful critique of ‘actor-network theory’. In an extended discussion of Leibniz’s famous example of the Dutch East India Company, Harman argues that this company qualifies for objecthood neither through ‘what it is’ or ‘what it does’, but through its irreducibility to either of these forms. The phases of its life, argues Harman, are not demarcated primarily by dramatic incidents but by moments of symbiosis, a term he draws from the biologist Lynn Margulis. This book provides a key counterpoint to the now ubiquitous social theories of constant change, holistic networks, performative identities, and the construction of things by human practice. It will appeal to anyone interested in cutting-edge debates in philosophy and social and cultural theory.

Polity

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Harman, Graham. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Harman, Graham

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Harman, Graham. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books)

Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political (Modern European Thinkers)

Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political (Modern European Thinkers)

Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making (Speculative Realism)

Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making (Speculative Realism)

Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects

Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things

Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing (Ideas Explained)

Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (Theory Redux)

Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (Theory Redux)