photo from August at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, by Gabriel Yoran

speaking in Bonn tonight

It’s at either 6:00 or 6:15 (I’ve heard it both ways), but as far as I know there is no live feed.

Maurizio Ferraris and Markus Gabriel will be on hand to respond. I’ve been having a great time with the most recent books of both.

Ferraris’s is the newly translated Documentality. Though documents are the major theme of the book, the first chapter contains a full-blown ontology, and the entire book is pleasurably witty. Ferraris is a former Derridean who went realist but still likes Derrida.

Gabriel’s new book is the German best-seller Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, a book every bit as warm and energetic as Gabriel is in person.

I have many agreements with Ferraris and Gabriel. Presumably the biggest point of disagreement is that both of them are inclined to treat the human subject as different in kind from anything else, whereas I am adamant that the human-world relation is not ontologically different from the fire-cotton relation or any other. Perception and knowledge are forms of causation for me. That’s one possible topic for the post-lecture discussion, and indeed the dinner discussion thereafter.

The schedule has gotten a bit crazy now. Over the next week I will be in Bonn, Ankara, Dubai, Lisbon, and Melbourne.