The Philosophy of Simondon: Between Technology and Individuation

by Pascal Chabot, Graeme Kirkpatrick (Translation), Aliza Krefetz (Translation)

The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the scholarly interest in technology, and have provoked new lines of thought in philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. Gilbert Simondon (1924 - 1989) was one of Frances's most influential philosophers in this field, and an important influence on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler. His work is only now being translated into English. Chabot's introduction to Simondon's work was published in French in 2002 and is now available in English for the first time. It is the most accessible guide to Simondon's important but often opaque work. Chabot provides an excellent introduction to Simondon, positioning him as a philosopher of technology, and he describes his theory of individuation including his crystalline ontology. He goes on to offer a bridge between these two concerns, exploring how they are related.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics, France

168 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2003

About the author

Pascal Chabot (né en 1973) est philosophe, conférencier et enseignant belge. Il enseigne la philosophie et les théories de la communication à l’IHECS (Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales) à Bruxelles.

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pascal Chabot’s introduction to the work of Gilbert Simondon - one of a precious few available in English - is a deceptively simple work by a writer of great elegance and poise. Less concerned with detailing the twists and turns of Simondon’s intricate arguments, Chabot instead hones in on the ramifications and cosmic implications of Simondon’s philosophy, laying bare the universal stakes of Simondon’s intertwined thought of technology and individuation. For Chabot, Simondon in fact comes off as more of a dreamer and a visionary than a philosopher: one whom, despite all his concern with technology, ultimately advocates for nothing less than a harmonization and reconciliation between humanity, technology, and the natural world from which both are borne.

Highlighting Simondon's affinity with the universalist sentiments of the Encyclopedists like Diderot and D'Alembert, Chabot thus paints Simondon as an enlightenment thinker with a twist: not nature, but technology can serve as the vector for a humanity redeemed, fulfilled in a 'technoaesthetic' in which the fusion of technology and nature lies at the endpoint of history. Just how Simondon attempted to chart this path of concordance is the unifying thread that runs through Chabot's book, which moves in bold, thematic brush strokes through Simondon’s relation to cybernetics, Marxism, Jungian depth psychology, and Simondon's otherwise puzzling engagements with the sacred and the arcane.

In some sense, The Philosophy of Simondon is almost too simple a book - Chabot's writing is so easily digestible that entire paragraphs can waft past without being truly absorbed. This is partly a consequence of a lack of any rigorous conceptual analysis which would provide grist to a philosophical mill, but this, in turn, is the price paid for the massive synoptic sweep that Chabot casts out across the span of Simondon's philosophy. To this degree, The Philosophy of Simondon is better characterized as an introduction to a Simondonian 'atmospherics', an acclimatization to the intellectual touchstones that underlie Simondon's overarching project. Perfect, in other words, for anyone looking for a gentle but broad induction into one of last century's most interesting thinkers.

[Vapula · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simondon is fascinating, but this is not a good introduction. The author seems torn between a popular and academic delivery that ends up limiting the technical capacities disclosed of Simondon's work, falling short of his continuity into later philosophical debates and instead leading to an excessively "self-help" Simondon. What would've made for a much more interesting explanation would be less the minor Jungian connection and more the place of the technician and trans-individual as what Deleuze calls conceptual personae, which very clearly applies to Simondon's work here.

[Mateo Jaramillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hasta el momento, el mejor texto que he encontrado para acercarse a Simondon. Una suerte de "Simondon para Dummies", cuyo mérito yace justamente en encontrar las palabras justas para reformular lo denso que le sirve de trasfondo. Hay no obstante constantes agregados de Chabot, si visión particular, mostrando una verdadera incorporación a modo de actualización bajo una voz singular que le es propia.