Epistemology and Political Philosophy in Gilbert Simondon

This combination of historiography and theory offers the growing Anglophone readership interested in the ideas of Gilbert Simondon a thorough and unprecedented survey of the French philosophers entire oeuvre. The publication, which breaks new ground in its thoroughness and breadth of analysis, systematically traces the interconnections between Simondons philosophy of science and technology on the one hand, and his political philosophy on the other. The author sets Simondons ideas in the context of the epistemology of the late 1950s and the 1960s in France, the milieu that shaped a generation of key French thinkers such as Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida. This volume explores Simondons sources, which were as eclectic as they were influential: from the philosophy of Bergson to the cybernetics of Wiener, from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to the epistemology of Canguilhem, and from Bachelards philosophy of science to the positivist sociology and anthropologyof luminaries such as Durkheim and Leroi-Gourhan. It also tackles aspects of Simondons philosophy that relate to Heidegger and Elull in their concern with the ontological relationship between technology and society and discusses key scholars of Simondon such as Barthlmy, Combes, Stiegler, and Virno, as well as the work of contemporary protagonists in the philosophical debate on the relevance of technique. The authors intimate knowledge of Simondons language allows him to resolve many of th e semantic errors and misinterpretations that have plagued reactions to Simondons many philosophical neologisms, often drawn from his scientific studies.