Energy Dreams (eBook)

Of Actuality

Michael Marder (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2017
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-54283-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and professor-at-large in the Humanities Institute at the University of Diego Portales, Chile. His recent books include Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium (2014), and, with Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives (2016).

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The question of energy is among the most vital for the future of humanity and the flourishing of life on this planet. Yet, only very rarely (if at all) do we ask what energy is, what it means, what ends it serves, and how it is related to actuality, meaning-making, and instrumentality. Energy Dreams interrogates the ontology of energy from the first coinage of the word energeia by Aristotle to the current practice of fracking and the popularity of "e;energy drinks."e; Its sustained, multi-disciplinary investigation builds a theoretical infrastructure for an alternative energy paradigm.This study unhinges stubbornly held assumptions about energy, conceived in terms of a resource to be violently extracted from the depths of the earth and from certain living beings (such as plants, converted into biofuels), a thing that, teetering on the verge of depletion, sparks off movement and is incompatible with the inertia of rest. Consulting the insights of philosophers, theologians, psychologists and psychoanalysts, economic and political theorists, and physicists, Michael Marder argues that energy is not only a coveted object of appropriation but also the subject who dreams of amassing it; that it not only resides in the dimension of depth but also circulates on the surface; that it activates rest as much as movement, potentiality as much as actuality; and that it is both the means and the end of our pursuits. Ultimately, Marder shows that, instead of being grounded in utopian naivete, the dreams of another energy-to be procured without devastating everything in existence-derive from the suppressed concept of energy itself.

Autor

Michael Marder (PhD, Philosophy, the New School) is IKERBASQUE Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country. He is the author of, among other books, Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt (Continuum, 2012), The Event of the Thing: Derrida’s Post-Deconstructive Realism (Toronto, 2013), Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (Columbia, 2013), The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium (Columbia, 2014), Energy Dreams (Columbia, 2017), and, with Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives (Columbia, 2016).

Inhalt

Opening Words1. Energy Dreams2. Theological Musings3. Economic Chimeras4. Psychological Reveries5. Political Fantasies6. Physical FanciesThe Last Word: Energy or Energies?P.S.—The Very Last WordNotesWorks CitedIndex

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.3.2017
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Geschichte der Philosophie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie Altertum / Antike
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• ISBN-10: 0-231-54283-6 / 0231542836
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-54283-8 / 9780231542838