Search results for ""Author Thomas Nail""
University of Minnesota Press The Philosophy of Movement
An influential thinker distills years of work on the philosophy of movement into one accessible account Why are city dwellers worldwide walking on average ten percent faster than they were a decade ago? Why are newcomer immigrant groups so often maligned when migration has always constituted civilization? To analyze and understand the depth of the reasons, Thomas Nail suggests that it serves us well to turn to a philosophy of movement. Synthesizing and extending many years of his influential work, The Philosophy of Movement is a comprehensive argument for how motion is the primary force in human and natural history. Nail critiques the bias toward stasis at the core of Western thought, asking: what would a philosophy that began with the primacy of movement look like? Interrogating the consequences of movement throughout history and in daily life in the twenty-first century, he draws connections and traces patterns between scales of rea
£89.10
Edinburgh University Press Lucretius III: A History of Motion
Offers a new theory of history through an original reading of Lucretius' De Rerum NaturaFor Lucretius, history means something surprisingly different than we ordinarily think. Instead of thinking of history in terms of time, he thought of it in terms of motion. This book unpacks the implications of this unique kinetic philosophy of history. In the final volume of his trilogy on De Rerum Natura, Thomas Nail argues that in books five and six, Lucretius described a world born to die. What does it mean to live in such a world? De Rerum Natura provides a guidebook to answering this question.
£95.00
Edinburgh University Press Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion
The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 yearsThomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book 'De Rerum Natura'.This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads 'De Rerum Natura' to offer us a new Lucretius a Lucretius for today.Key FeaturesA new materialist, quantum and feminist interpretation of LucretiusArgues the original and provocative thesis that Lucretius was not an atomist but rather the first philosopher of motionThe most profound revision of how we read Lucretius since Michel Serres' 'The Birth of Physics' (1977)
£20.99
Edinburgh University Press Matter and Motion
Tells a new history of materialism from prehistory to the present that resists stasis, heirarchy and domination Traces a lineage of thinkers who have philosophically integrated ideas of matter, motion, indeterminacy, relationality and process Discusses thinkers drawn from the ancient to the modern from the Bronze Age to quantum physics who each offer their own kind of evidence for a world without metaphysics or hierarchy Shows that the established hierarchies that govern Western thought and society are in fact contingent and performative there is no ontologically legitimate justification for social, aesthetic or scientific domination Thomas Nail traces an alternative history of ancient and modern thinkers who share a radically different understanding of the nature of matter and motion compared to the rest of the Euro-Western tradition. From Archaic Greek poetry and Bronze Age Minoan religion to the Roman poet Lucretius, and from German philosopher Karl Marx and English writer Virginia Woolf to contemporary physicists Carlo Rovelli and Karen Barad, Nail identifies a minor tradition of what he calls kinetic materialism and its three central ideas: indeterminacy, relationality and process. For the most part, Western thinkers have considered matter and motion to be inferior to more formal and static principles. Philosophers placed metaphysical categories such as eternity, God, the soul, forms and essences at the 'top' of a hierarchy that secured and ordered the movement at the bottom. This has real consequences in our world. By placing stasis above motion, this hierarchy places form above matter, life above death, God above humans, humans above nature, men above women, white skin above brown skin, the first world over the third world, citizens above migrants, straight above queer The result? Patriarchy, capitalism, racism, homophobia, ecocide. Nail seeks to undermine this inherited hierarchy and the notion that matter and motion are inferior. There are no fixed authorities. This new history of matter and motion leaves the good life up to us, whoever we may become.
£14.99
Stanford University Press The Figure of the Migrant
This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.
£23.99
Edinburgh University Press Theory of the Object
Thomas Nail approaches the theory of objects historically in order to tell a completely new story in which objects themselves are the true agents of scientific knowledge. They are processes, not things. This is the first history of science and technology, from prehistory to the present, illuminating the agency, knowledge and mobility of objects.
£19.99
Stanford University Press Theory of the Earth
We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.
£23.39
Stanford University Press The Figure of the Migrant
This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.
£89.10
Stanford University Press Theory of the Earth
We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.
£97.20
Edinburgh University Press Lucretius II: An Ethics of Motion
£16.13
Edinburgh University Press Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo
Presents an account of the concept of revolution in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Much has been written on Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy in the last 15 years. Now, Returning to Revolution is the first full length work to date on their central concept of revolution and its emergence alonside the most influential revolutionary movement of the 21st century: Zapatismo. Outlines the theoretical and practical origins of the return to political revolution and provides the first full length account of Deleuze and Guattari's relationship to a concrete revolutionary struggle.
£22.99
University of Minnesota Press The Philosophy of Movement
An influential thinker distills years of work on the philosophy of movement into one accessible account Why are city dwellers worldwide walking on average ten percent faster than they were a decade ago? Why are newcomer immigrant groups so often maligned when migration has always constituted civilization? To analyze and understand the depth of the reasons, Thomas Nail suggests that it serves us well to turn to a philosophy of movement. Synthesizing and extending many years of his influential work, The Philosophy of Movement is a comprehensive argument for how motion is the primary force in human and natural history. Nail critiques the bias toward stasis at the core of Western thought, asking: what would a philosophy that began with the primacy of movement look like? Interrogating the consequences of movement throughout history and in daily life in the twenty-first century, he draws connections and traces patterns between scales of reality, periods of history, and fields of knowledge
£23.39
Edinburgh University Press Lucretius III: A History of Motion
Offers a new theory of history through an original reading of Lucretius' De Rerum NaturaFor Lucretius, history means something surprisingly different than we ordinarily think. Instead of thinking of history in terms of time, he thought of it in terms of motion. This book unpacks the implications of this unique kinetic philosophy of history. In the final volume of his trilogy on De Rerum Natura, Thomas Nail argues that in books five and six, Lucretius described a world born to die. What does it mean to live in such a world? De Rerum Natura provides a guidebook to answering this question.
£15.38
Edinburgh University Press Between Deleuze and Foucault
Deleuze and Foucault had a long, complicated and productive relationship, in which each was at various times a significant influence on the other. This collection combines 3 original essays by Deleuze and Foucault, in which they respond to each other’s work, with 16 critical essays by key contemporary scholars working in the field. The result is a sustained discussion and analysis of the various dimensions of this fascinating relationship, which clarifies the implications of their philosophical encounter.
£22.99
