- Pierre Montebello, who works on what he calls "l'autre métaphysique", by which he means Tarde, Ravaisson, Nietzsche, and Bergson, and is very much one important figures in trying to think a metaphysics of nature- Frédéric Worms, who I mentioned in my first email, is a specialist of Bergson and contemporary (i.e. XXth century) French philosophy more generally, and an important number of PhD students under him are working around Bergson and therefore sometimes on issues related to nature- Meillassoux is obviously instrumental to bringing contemporary metaphysics into view in the last decade- Olivier Surel, who works on Nature and social ontology, is one of the few young people who writes on matters I feel affinity with, and who deals with Speculative Realism beside Meillassoux and Badiou- The Simondonians have a journal, Cahiers Simondon ; besides Barthelemy (who has written a book on Simondon and nature philosophy), there are Baptiste Morizot Anne Sauvagnargues, and Anne Lefebvre ; they held a colloquium this summer at Cerisy : http://www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr/simondon13.html- Around Didier Debaise and Isabelle Stengers, other Belgian names that regularly turn up are Michel Weber and Vinciane Desprets. They also held a Cerisy colloquium this year : http://www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr/gestes13.html. It is noteworthy, I think, that the center of gravity for francophone Whitehead studies is actually outside France- The CIEPFC is one of the major places, in Paris, where activity on such matters takes place ; their members list ( http://www.ciepfc.fr/spip.php?rubrique1 ) points to quite a few interesting names, such as Camille Riquier or Ioulia Podoroga, and Patrice Maniglier ; I wrote you a few months back about the collection at PUF, MétaphysiqueS, http://www.puf.com/Liste/Ouvrages_par_collection?dyncat=M%C3%A9taphysiqueS, which published Souriau, Garcia, and Viveiros de Castro- A noteworthy book was published in 2011, an anthology on the "Philosophie des possessions", by Debaise, Latour, Stengers, and others : http://www.lespressesdureel.com/ouvrage.php?id=1475- People working on or around Schelling, like Alexander Schnell, Miklos Vetö, Xavier Tilliette or Emmanuel Cattin, or Jean-Christope Lemaître are interesting. Schnell has recently written a book trying to alter phenomenology in order to make it speculative, En voie de réel, which looks like a must-read : http://www.editions-hermann.fr/ficheproduit.php?lang=fr&menu=9&ref=Philosophie+En+voie+du+r%E9el&prodid=1440 ; he wrote what looks like a summary of it in english : http://philpapers.org/rec/SCHSFO-2- Descola, Latour, de Castro and others, had a Cerisy colloquium (again !) this year, which I attended, and which was a wonderful moment of intellectual life at its best : http://www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr/metaphysiques13.html ; there I heard, among other things, about Eduardo Kohn's book on Forest-thinking, which references Peirce's theory of signs in trying to apply it to nature. He's American, so not a part of this report, but I think you might like his book !- Mathias Girel works on James, Peirce, and pragmatism, has read some of Corrington's writing (on nature), and is very fluent in American philosophy in general. His site : http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mathias_Girel/publications/- Klesis , an important philosophy journal, published an issue on philosophies of nature this year : http://www.revue-klesis.org/numeros.html#d25
Monday, October 7, 2013
Louis Morelle: French "scene report" nature philosophy and metaphysics
I've been corresponding with Louis Morelle this past week, with curious questions concerning the state of metaphysics in France - particularly nature philosophy and metaphysics, the "nature ontologists." Louis has agreed for me to publish a portion of our correspondence. Perhaps this week at some point I can post thoughts/comments. Below is what Louis reports.
