Overview
- Offers a complete philosophical epistemology of late capitalism based on ‘the sign’ and its use
- Combines traditional philosophy, continental philosophy and object-oriented ontology to give us a comprehensive description of late capitalist reality
- Revitalizes what we thought we knew about the psychological term ‘neurosis’ and has applied its symptoms to philosophy and everyday reality
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy (BRIEFSPHILOSOPH)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This intriguing and compact book investigates whether or not philosophy can have a use in the face of ‘capitalist realism’ today. Can philosophy study everyday objects like computers and mobile phones? Can it think of advertising, the population, electricity, buildings and even dreams as ‘objects’ in their own right, which convey particular and novel qualities when analysed?
Johns’ book starts from an immanent phenomenological study of objects, arguing that such objects disclose larger systems of anthropological meaning and control. The author moves away from the Husserlian ‘essence’ of the object and embeds his objects in a series of ‘uses’ (or ‘equipment’ as Heidegger called it). However, Johns makes a speculative move by positing the very existence of such ‘uses’ distinct from the human and first person phenomenological consciousness. This is when the annals of phenomenology meet contemporary strands of realism such as Speculative and Object Oriented models. 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. This is because the author believes that certain aspects of a relation withholds itself in its act of relating. The mutual dynamics of relation and property are thus rearticulated in a new light. This novel description of relation places Johns squarely between relational ontologies (such as Deleuze, Latour and Garcia) and non-relational ontologies (Harman).
This work is invaluable to researchers and any reader of contemporary philosophy in the age of advanced technology and capitalism.Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Irreducible Reality of the Object
Book Subtitle: Phenomenological and Speculative Theories of Equipmentality
Authors: Charles William Johns
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51414-3
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s),under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-51413-6Published: 18 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-51414-3Published: 17 August 2020
Series ISSN: 2211-4548
Series E-ISSN: 2211-4556
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 133
Topics: Critical Theory, Postmodern Philosophy, Phenomenology