Simondon

In his lifetime, Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was considered an original, though complex, technical philosopher. Today, he is mainly known as the craftsman of a “new encyclopaedism” whose aim is to unify the sciences within a natural philosophy and to revive humanism.According to Simondon’s “genetic ontology,” everything owes its reality to the genesis in which it “individuates itself.” The latter is a never-ending process in which inertia, life, technology, social issues, as well as knowledge and thoughts themselves are a part.This book analyses “individuation” in its three key dimensions – the difference between the physical and the biological, the “transindividual,” and the technical object – in order to then show not only how Simondon’s geneticism ventures beyond the traditional oppositions between matter and form or subject and object, but also the antagonisms (for example between technicism and humanism), each of which claims to have conceived nature and man. Lastly, the book explores the political and social challenge of a philosophy for which a true “technical culture” could eliminate one of the principal causes of human alienation and give humanity the means to understand its world.