Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy

2012
Author:

François Laruelle
Translated by Drew S. Burk
Distributed for Univocal Publishing

Advancing the project of non-philosophy

Very few thinkers have traveled the heretical path that François Laruelle walks between philosophy and non-philosophy. For Laruelle, the future of philosophy is problematic, but a mutation of its functions is possible. Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy elucidates some of the fundamental problems of non-philosophy and takes on its detractors.

Very few thinkers have traveled the heretical path that François Laruelle walks between philosophy and non-philosophy. For Laruelle, the future of philosophy is problematic, but a mutation of its functions is possible. Up until now, philosophy has merely been a utopia concerned with the past and provided only the services of its conservation. We must introduce a rigorous and nonimaginary practice of a utopia in action, a philo-fiction—a close relative to science fiction. From here we can see the double meaning of the watchword, a tabula rasa of the future. This new destination is imposed by a specifically human messianism, an eschatology within the limits of the Man-in-person as antihumanist ultimatum addressed to the History of Philosophy. This book elucidates some of the fundamental problems of non-philosophy and takes on its detractors.

François Laruelle is professor emeritus at the University of Paris West Nanterre La Défence and the inventor of the science of philosophy, nonphilosophy.

Drew S. Burk is a cultural theorist and translator of contemporary French philosophy.

Anthony Paul Smith is an Assistant Professor of Religion at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

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