The first volume of my book is out!

I am glad to announce that Philosophy's ends, the first volume of my book, The Passion of Life, has just been published.

In this volume I show that philosophy's much-discussed "end" actually reveals its deep entanglement with play. Through close readings of Hegel and Lévi-Strauss, I expose a critical paradox: play-based accounts of life fall apart unless we drop the false split between activity and passivity. I trace passivity from Aristotle through post-Classical and modern debates on the passions to recover receptivity — the ground for grasping human life as intrinsically passive and contingent.

In Life, described (Volume 2), I turn to cybernetics, evolutionary biology, and psychoanalysis to show how each reveals life as a passive, contingent phenomenon. In Life, lived (Volume 3), I ask what such an existence actually looks like, drawing on Christian mysticism and socio-political critique.

The first volume is available through the usual channels, and you can read the introduction to the whole trilogy here.

The second and third volumes are now in production and will come out within the year as well.