3/3/10

Collapse - The best philosophy around

Collapse Vol. VI: Geo/Philosophy

"Following Collapse V's inquiry into the legacy of Copernicus' deposing of Earth from its central position in the cosmos, Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy poses the question: Is there nevertheless an enduring bond between philosophical thought and its terrestrial support, or conversely, is philosophy's task to escape the planetary horizon?
Following early-modern geophilosophical experiments in utopia, geographies and cartographies real and imaginary have played a double role in philosophy, serving both as governing metaphor and as an ultimate grounding for philosophical thought.
Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy begins with the provisional premise that the Earth does not square elements of thought but rather rounds them up into a continuous spatial and geographical horizon. Geophilosophy is thus not necessarily the philosophy of the earth as a round object of thought but rather the philosophy of all that can be rounded as an (or the) earth. But in that case, what is the connection between the empirical earth, the contingent material support of human thinking, and the abstract 'world' that is the condition for a 'whole' of thought?
Urgent contemporary concerns introduce new dimensions to this problem: The complicity of Capitalism and Science concomitant with the nomadic remobilization of global Capital has caused mutations in the field of the territorial, shifting and scrambling the determinations that subtended modern conceptions of the nation-state and territorial formations. And scientific predictions presents us with the possibility of a planet contemplating itself without humans, or of an abyssal cosmos that abides without Earth - these are the vectors of relative and absolute deterritorialization which nourish the twenty-first century apocalyptic imagination. Obviously, no geophilosophy can remain oblivious to the unilateral nature of such un-earthing processes. Furthermore, the rise of so-called rogue states which sabotage their own territorial formation in order to militantly withstand the proliferation of global capitalism calls for an extensive renegotiation of geophilosophical concepts in regard to territorializing forces and the State. Can traditions of geophilosophical thought provide an analysis that escapes the often flawed, sentimental or cryptoreligious fashions in which popular discourse casts these catastrophic developments?
Collapse VI brings together philosophers, theorists, eco-critics, leading scientific experts in climate change, and artists whose work interrogates the link between philosophical thought, geography and cartography, in order to create a portrait of the present state of 'planetary thought'.

Contents
ROBIN MACKAY: Editorial Introduction. NICOLA MASCIANDARO Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy. IAIN HAMILTON GRANT Introduction to Schelling's On the World Soul. F. W. J. SCHELLING On the World Soul (Extract). GREG MCINERNY, DREW PURVES, RICH WILLIAMS, STEPHEN EMMOTT New Ecologies (Interview).
TIMOTHY MORTON Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, the Strange Stranger and the Beautiful Soul. F I E L D C L U B How Many Slugs Maketh the Man? OWEN HATHERLEY Fossils of Time Future: Bunkers and Buildings from the Atlantic Wall to the South Bank EYAL WEIZMAN
Political Plastic (Interview) ANGELA DETANICO AND RAFAEL LAIN A Given Time / A Given Place MANABRATA GUHA Introduction to SIMADology: Polemos in the 21st Century
REZA NEGARESTANI Undercover Softness: An Introduction to the Architecture and Politics of Decay ROBIN MACKAY Philosophers' Islands CHARLES AVERY The Islanders: Epilogue
GILLES GRELET Theory is Waiting RENEÉ GREEN Endless Dreams and Waters Between
Collapse Vol. V: The Copernican Imperative

Ever since Nicolaus Copernicus unmoored the Earth from its anchorage at the centre of the Universe and set it hurtling around the Sun, science has progressively uncovered the lineaments of an objective reality to which human experience stands as only the most superficial and attenuated of abstractions.
Collapse V brings together some of the most intellectually-challenging contemporary work devoted to exploring the philosophical implications of this ever-widening gulf between the real and the intuitable from a variety of overlapping and complementary standpoints.
With articles by groundbreaking philosophers and scientists, in-depth interviews with prominent thinkers, and new work from contemporary artists, Collapse V addresses the issues of the 'deanthropomorphisation' of reality initiated by the Copernican Revolution, and the enduring chasm between the spontaneous image of reality bequeathed to us by evolution and that revealed by the sciences in the wake of Copernicus.

Contents
DAMIAN VEAL Editorial Introduction CARLO ROVELLI Anaximander's LegacyJULIAN BARBOUR The View from Nowhen (Interview) CONRAD SHAWCROSS AND ROBIN MACKAY Shadows of Copernicanism JAMES LADYMAN Who's Afraid of Scientism? (Interview) THOMAS METZINGER Enlightenment 2.0 (Interview) NIGEL COOKE Thinker Dejecta JACK COHEN AND IAN STEWART Alien Science (Interview) MILAN CIRKOVIC
Sailing the Archipelago NICK BOSTROM Where are They? KEITH TYSON Random Sampler from a Blocktime Animation MARTIN SCHÖNFELD The Phoenix of Nature IMMANUEL KANT On Creation in the Total Extent of its Infinity in Space and Time IAIN HAMILTON GRANT Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism GABRIEL CATREN A Throw of the Quantum Dice
ALBERTO GUALANDI Errancies of the HumanPAUL HUMPHRIES Thinking Outside the Brain Collapse Vol. IV: Concept Horror

Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. This unique volume continues Collapse's pursuit of indisciplinary miscegenation, the wide-ranging contributions interacting to produce common themes and suggestive connections. In the process a rich and compelling case emerges for the intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought

Contents
ROBIN MACKAY Editorial Introduction GEORGE SIEG Infinite Regress into Self-Referential Horror: The Gnosis of the Victim EUGENE THACKER Nine Disputations on Theology and Horror RAFANI Czech Forest CHINA MIÉVILLE M. R. James and the Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and and/or or? REZA NEGARESTANI The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo JAKE AND DINOS CHAPMANI Can See MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ Poems JAMES TRAFFORD The Shadow of a Puppet Dance: Metzinger, Ligotti and the Illusion of Selfhood THOMAS LIGOTTI / OLEG KULIK Thinking Horror / 'Memento Mori' QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX Spectral Dilemma BENJAMIN NOYS Horror Temporis IAIN HAMILTON GRANT / TODOSCH Being and Slime: The Mathematics of Protoplasm in Lorenz Oken's 'Physio-Philosophy' / Drawings STEVEN SHEARER Poems GRAHAM HARMAN / KEITH TILFORD On the Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl / Singular Agitations and a Common Vertigo KRISTEN ALVANSON Arbor Deformia

Free download. http://www.urbanomic.com/CollapseIV.pdf
Collapse Vol. III: Unknown Deleuze [+ Speculative Realism]

Collapse III contains explorations of the work of Gilles Deleuze by pioneering thinkers in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, music and architecture. In addition, we publish in this volume two previously untranslated texts by Deleuze himself, along with a fascinating piece of vintage science fiction from one of his more obscure influences. Finally, as an annex to Collapse Volume II, we also include a full transcription of the conference on Speculative Realism held in London in 2007.
The contributors to this volume aim to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, Deleuze's contribution to philosophy: in what does his philosophical originality lie; what does he appropriate from other philosophers and how does he transform it? And how can the apparently disparate threads of his work to be 'integrated' - what is the precise nature of the constellation of the aesthetic, the conceptual and the political proposed by Gilles Deleuze, and what are the overarching problems in which the numerous philosophical concepts 'signed Deleuze' converge?

Contents
ROBIN MACKAY Editorial Introduction THOMAS DUZER In Memoriam: Gilles Deleuze 1925-1995 GILLES DELEUZE Responses to a Series of Questions ARNAUD VILLANI "I Feel I Am A Pure Metaphysician": The Consequences of Deleuze's Remark QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX
Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence and Matter and Memory HASWELL & HECKER Blackest Ever Black GILLES DELEUZE Mathesis, Science and Philosophy JOHN SELLARS The Truth about Chronos and Aion ÉRIC ALLIEZ & JOHN-CLAUDE BONNE
Matisse-Thought and the Strict Ordering of Fauvism MEHRDAD IRAVANIAN Unknown Deleuze J.-H. ROSNY THE ELDER Another World RAY BRASSIER, IAIN HAMILTON GRANT, GRAHAM HARMAN, QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX Speculative Realism
Collapse Vol. II: Speculative Realism

Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, and involving them in unforeseen and productive syntheses, Collapse II features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and cinéastes, and searching interviews with leading scientists.
Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics - the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its "end", the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency - both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.

Contents
ROBIN MACKAY Editorial Introduction RAY BRASSIER The Enigma of Realism QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX Potentiality and Virtuality ROBERTO TROTTA Dark Matter: Facing the Arche-Fossil (Interview) GRAHAM HARMAN On Vicarious Causation PAUL CHURCHLAND
Demons Get Out! (Interview) CLÉMENTINE DUZER & LAURA GOZLAN Nevertheless Empire REZA NEGARESTANI Islamic Exotericism: Apocalypse in the Wake of Refractory Impossibility
KRISTEN ALVANSON Elysian Space in the Middle East
Collapse Vol. I: Numerical Materialism

Collapse is an unprecedented collection of work by leading practitioners in diverse fields of enquiry. Conceived as a meticulously compiled and compendious miscellany, a grimoire or instruction manual without referent, as a delirious carnival of sobriety, Collapse operates its war against good sense not through romantic flight but through the formal insanity secreted in the depths of the rational ("the rational is not reasonable").
Collapse aims to force unforeseen conjunctions, singular correspondences, and unnatural cross-fertilisations; to diagram abstract regions as yet unnamed.
The first volume of Collapse investigates the nature and philosophical uses of number through interviews with philosophers scientists and mathematicians, essays on the mathematics of intensity, terrorism, the occult and information theory, and graphical works of multiplicity.

Contents
ROBIN MACKAYEditorial Introduction ALAIN BADIOU Philosophy, Sciences, Mathematics (Interview) GREGORY CHAITINEpistemology as Information TheoryREZA NEGARESTANI
The Militarization of PeaceMATTHEW WATKINS Prime Evolution (Interview) "INCOGNITUM" Introduction to ABJAD. NICK BOSTROM Existential Risk (Interview) THOMAS DUZER On the Mathematics of Intensity KEITH TILFORD Crowds NICK LAND Qabbala 101

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