Non-Standard Philosophy

François Laruelle’s decades-long development of “non-philosophy” remains among the most distinctive and significant intellectual projects in contemporary Continental thought. Non-Standard Philosophy is one of his most important works, at once the culmination of non-philosophy and a radical breakthrough that redefines philosophical concepts by way of quantum mechanics.

Non-Standard Philosophy integrates philosophy, science, and poetic invention in a powerful new theoretical framework. Non-standard philosophy is to philosophy as quantum mechanics is to physics: a revolution in what can be known and how it can be known. Laruelle puts non-standard philosophy into practice, constructing a laboratory of experimentation with philosophical and scientific concepts that is modeled on the role of particle colliders in physics. Quantum mechanics provides Laruelle with a means both to instantiate non-philosophical research and to explain its particular form of practice. At once scientifically rigorous and philosophically inventive, this approach offers a systematic alternative to conventional modes of thinking.

Non-Standard Philosophy stands alongside Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Derrida’s Of Grammatology, and Badiou’s Being and Event as one of the towering works of contemporary French thought. The theoretical ambition, interdisciplinary scope, and future potentialities of this book make it essential reading for scholars and students in the critical humanities.