Dishonorable: The Complete Trilogy

A long-awaited translation on the philosophical relation between technology, the individual, and milieu of the living From Democritus’s atomism to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, from Aristotle’s reflections on the individual to Husserl’s call for a focused return to things, from the philosophical advent of the Cartesian ego and the Leibnizian monad to Heidegger’s notion of Dasein, the question concerning the constitution of the individual has continued to loom large over the preoccupations of philosophers and scholars of scientific disciplines for thousands of years. Through conceptions in modern scientific areas of research such as thermodynamics, the fabrication of technical objects, gestalt theory, cybernetics, and the dynamic formation at work in the creation of crystals, Gilbert Simondon’s unique multifaceted philosophical and scholarly research will eventually lead to an astounding reevaluation and questioning of the historical methods for posing the very question and notion of the individual. More than fifty years after its original publication in French, this groundbreaking work of philosophical theory is now available in its first complete English language translation. Volume I 1 Contents 7 Introduction 29 Part I. Physical Individuation 46 1. Form and Matter 49 2. Form and Energy 83 3. Form and Substance 123 Part II. The Individuation of Living Beings 195 1. Information and Ontogenesis: Vital Individuation 195 2. Psychical Individuation 285 3. Collective Individuation and the Foundations of the Transindividual 355 Conclusion 385 Notes 408 Volume II: Supplemental texts 425 1. Values and the Search for Objectivity 429 2. Individuation and Invention 438 History of the Notion of the Individual 462 Supplements 679 Analysis of the Criteria of Individuality 682 Allagmatics 689 Form, Information, and Potentials 700 Notes 727 Unique access to archival material of a major thinker, including presentations, earlydrafts, and a thorough introduction to the history of the philosophical notion of the individual From thermodynamics to gestalt theory to cybernetics, Gilbert Simondon's multifaceted philosophical and scholarly research will lead to an astounding reevaluation and questioning of the historical methods for posing the very question and notion of the individual. More than fifty years after its publication in French, this groundbreaking work of philosophical theory is now available in its first complete English language translation