Indexicalism: Realism and the Metaphysics of Paradox

by Hilan Bensusan

Hilan Bensusan clarifies the logic and structure of an essentially situated and indexical metaphysics that adds a paradoxical new chapter to the critique of metaphysics. Bensusan articulates a metaphysical view of the other, both human and non-human (or the Great Outdoors as Meillassoux called
it), that can never be totalised into a single or univocal whole. An innovative account of perception is developed, as a matter of our irreducibly situated relationship to this non-totalisable Outdoors. In the book's coda, Bensusan underscores the social-political implications of this radical
metaphysics in a postcolonial context in a meditation on the sites of Potosi in the Andes and Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Engaging with analytic and continental philosophy, Bensusan enlists Levinas, Whitehead, Heidegger, Kripke, Deleuze, Derrida, Benso, Harman, Garcia, Cogburn,
McDowell and Haraway. He does so in such a way that proves to be transformative both for crucial aspects of their work and for contemporary approaches to thinking about what it means to be in our world and to reckon with the responsibilities that press upon us from the outside.

Genres: Philosophy

232 pages, Hardcover

Published September 28, 2021

About the author

First interested in general thoughts and then on singular thoughts - and singular occurrences in general. Then moved to what escapes principles - anarchaeology. Then to contingency in general. More recently the focus has been proximity and situatedness.