The triumph of technological rationality and of the sciences as a whole
has by no means provided answers to humanity's great questions. Instead,
it has raised new and old questions and problems. To orient ourselves in
the twenty-first century, we must take a new look at the central
categories of philosophy that, often unbeknownst to us, continue to
shape our everyday thinking.
Future Metaphysics is an attempt at restating the importance of the
great metaphysical categories for the present: how our contemporary
predicament forces us both to reclaim them and to give them a radically
new twist. Armen Avanessian re-examines and displaces categories like
substance and accident, form and matter, life and death, giving them an
unexpected twist. What if the idea of accident, for instance, had to
take into account the many new kinds of glitches, crashes and crises -
from finance to ecology, from technological catastrophes to social
collapses - that permeate our culture and make everyday news? Can we
keep on using this concept as it was traditionally meant to be used when
risk and chance have become part of the very substance of our world, so
rendering the distinction between substance and accident meaningless?
The other concepts and distinctions require a similar interrogation,
giving birth to a new metaphysical landscape, where the most urgent
realities of the twenty-first century impinge on the most fundamental
categories of thought.
