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Table of Contents -- Dedication -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Epigraph -- Introduction -- Notes -- First Lecture: On the instability of the (notion of) nature -- Notes -- Second Lecture: How not to (de-)animate nature -- Notes -- Third Lecture: Gaia, a (finally secular) figure for nature -- Notes -- Fourth Lecture: The Anthropocene and the destruction of (the image of) the Globe -- Notes -- Fifth Lecture: How to convene the various peoples (of nature)? -- Notes -- Sixth Lecture: How (not) to put an end to the end of times? -- Notes -- Seventh Lecture: The States (of Nature) between war and peace -- Notes -- Eighth Lecture: How to govern struggling (natural) territories? -- Notes -- References -- Index -- End User License Agreement

Bruno Latour is among the most important figures in contemporary philosophy and social science. His ethnographic studies have revolutionized our understanding of areas as diverse as science, law, politics and religion. To facilitate a more realistic understanding of the world, Latour has introduced a radically fresh philosophical terminology and a new approach to social science, 'Actor-Network Theory'. In seminal works such as Laboratory Life, We Have Never Been Modern and An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Latour has outlined an alternative to the foundational categories of 'modern' western thought Ð particularly its distinction between society and nature Ð that has major consequences for our understanding of the ecological crisis and of the role of science in democratic societies. Latour's 'empirical philosophy' has evolved considerably over the past four decades. In this lucid and compelling book, Gerard de Vries provides one of the first overviews of Latour's work. He guides readers through Latour's main publications, from his early ethnographies to his more recent philosophical works, showing with considerable skill how Latour's ideas have developed. This book will be of great value to students and scholars attempting to come to terms with the immense challenge posed by Latour's thought. It will be of interest to those studying philosophy, anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, and almost all other branches of the social sciences and humanities.

Review: Latour, Bruno. 2004. Mes niekada nebuvome modernūs. Simetrinės antropologijos esė. Vilnius: ALK / Homo liber.

Bruno Latour is one of the leading figures in Social Sciences today, but his contributions are also widely recognised in the arts. His theories 'flourished' in the 1980s in the aftermath of the structuralism wave and generated new concepts and methodologies for the understanding of the social. In the past decade, Latour and his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) have gained popularity among researchers in the field of architecture.

Latour for Architects is the first introduction to the key concepts and ideas of Bruno Latour that are relevant to architects. First, the book discusses critically how specific methods and insights from his philosophy can inspire new thinking in architecture and design pedagogy. Second, it explores examples from architectural practice and urban design, and reviews recent attempts to extend the methods of ANT into the fields of architectural and urban studies. Third, the book advocates an ANT-inspired approach to architecture, and examines how its methodological insights can trace new research avenues in the field, reflecting meticulously on its epistemological offerings.

Drawing on many lively examples from the world of architectural practice, the book makes a compelling argument about the agency of architectural design and the role architects can play in re-ordering the world we live in. Following Latour's philosophy offers a new way to handle all the objects of human and nonhuman collective life, to re-examine the role of matter in design practice, and to redefine the forms of social, political and ethical associations that bind us together in cities.

Bruno Latour has been attempting to transform his sociological account of science into an ambitious theory of democracy. In a key early moment in this project, Latour alleges that Plato's Gorgias introduces an impossibly ratio-nalistic and deeply anti-democratic philosophy which continues to this day to distort our understandings of science and democracy. Latour reckons that if he can successfully refute the Gorgias, then he will have opened up a space in which to authorize his own theory of democracy. I argue that Latour's refutation of the Gorgias is a failure. Hence, his political theory is, by his own standards, horribly underdetermined. I present another reading of the Gorgias, and consider the dialogue's possible relevance for current theories of deliberative democracy.

What Do the Humanities Do? -- An Ecology of Institutions: Recomposing the Humanities / Stephen Muecke -- From ANT to Pragmatism: A Journey with Bruno Latour at the CSI / Antoine Hennion -- "Demodernizing the Humanities with Latour" / Graham Harman -- "Care, Concern, and the Ethics of Description" / Heather Love -- "Redistributing Critique" / Anders Blok and Casper Bruun Jensen -- "Decomposing the Humanities" / Steven Connor -- "Humanities in the Anthropocene" / Dipesh Chakrabarty -- "Fictional Attachments and Literary Weavings in the Anthropocene" / Yves Citton -- "Are the Humanities Modern?" / Simon During -- "The University of Life" / Nigel Thrift -- Latour and the Disciplines -- "Critique, Modernity, Society, Agency: Matters of Concern in Literary Studies" / David Alworth -- "Cinematic Assemblies: Latour and Film Studies" / Claudia Breger -- "Latour, the Digital Humanities, and the Divided Kingdom of Knowledge" / Michael Witmore -- "Anthropotheology: Latour Speaking Religiously" / Barbara Herrnstein Smith -- Politics is a "Mode of Existence": Why Political Theorists Should Leave Hobbes for Montesquieu / Gerard de Vries -- "Art as Fiction: Can Latour's Ontology of Art Be Ratified by Art Lovers?" / Patrice Maniglier -- "Actor-Network Aesthetics" / Francis Halsall -- Afterword Bruno Latour, Life among Conceptual Characters.

This work revolves around some of the problems ecological thinking encounters when it questions humans' relation with nature. It moves within a territory where ecophilosophy is intended not just to support managerial approaches to ecological problems, but to deal with the entanglement of ontological and ethical issues in regard to what nature is and how we see it, as well as who we are, humans in the ecological crisis. This inquiry, then, explores the meaning of the separation between the human and the natural realms, retrieves its origin in the natural/artificial axis and in the subject/object dichotomy, and considers our representations of nature and the structure of representation itself as a key ecological issue. A relational, entangled understanding of the human and the natural reality is then regarded as the key to interpret and face our current ecological situation. Norwegian founder of deep ecology Arne Naess, Bruno Latour's political ecology, and the founder of the Mādhyamika school of Mahāyāna Buddhism Nāgārjuna are the three central references that dialogue in this work. All three deal with a relational or radically relative reality, and the theoretical and practical consequences of it for some concepts of nature. Naess' work can be considered paradigmatic of much environmentalist sensitivity, in as much as his "ecosophy" attempts to give philosophical form to organicistic and interrelated images of the relation between humans and nature. Naess' idea of "ecological self," entertaining "intrinsic relations" with nature, deals with central ecophilosophical issues, stressing the continuity of nature and humanity in lieu of a man/nature dualism, and the counterpart issue of humanity's peculiar place in nature. Nevertheless, an analysis of Naess' relationism inevitably stumbles into the structure of representation itself in terms of a subject's frontal gaze onto its object, making us wonder whether the proposed switch to a relational worldview is something that can actually overcome the humans/nature separation. Indeed, Naess's problems are more radical within ecophilosophy. Just as Latour notes, Naess does feel the limitations of modern metaphysics in the understanding of the ecological crisis, but the ecological crisis and our relation to nature are entangled with the status of objectivity, subjectivity and with a hidden "metaphysics of nature." The problems opened by relationism are intrinsic to the concept of nature, that the Western world has framed as other to humanity: everything that is not "artificial". This original axis or separation underlies both managerial environmentalist approaches, and ecophilosophical attempts to bridge the dualistic gap. Ambiguities in terms of simultaneous continuity and difference, immanence and transcendence, belonging and extraneousness emerge when the nature/humanity axis is articulated. The humanity/nature fracture is most tragic in the political tension between ecological naturalistic references to a green nature beyond the social realm, and culturalist critiques associated with an anxiety for foundational and immediate natural dimensions. According to Bruno Latour, the difficulties environmentalism faces when trying to secure its political influence emerge as equivocations caused by the a priori framework of nature as otherness to humanity. The nature/culture framework is only one of the possible ways to represent the common world of humans and nonhumans. Latour announces the "end of nature" as a political-ecological solution to the problem of representation. It is possible to reopen the political work of composition of the common world, bringing the sciences (both humanities and hard sciences) to give simultaneous scientific and political representation to phenomena such as climate change or species extinction, which are impossible to categorize as just human or just natural. In this radically relational world, ethics would be the continuous reopening of the constitution of our common world. The second part of this work takes a leap from contemporary ecophilosophical reflection to ancient Indian Buddhism, which was initially triggered by the references Arne Naess makes to Nāgārjuna's "emptiness of own-nature" in order to illustrate his relationism. Despite the opposing solutions to the problem of relationism and representation offered by Naess and Latour, the knot of subjectivity remains the hardest to unfasten, even though this unfastening appears to be a fundamental condition for dealing with ecological issues. Therefore, Nāgārjuna's concept of emptiness [śūnyatā] will soon prove to be of rare assistance in powerfully addressing the tension between a radically relative reality and the attachment of the subject's view to the "nature of things."

Boekbespreking van Arjen Kleinherenbrink (2022) De constructie van de wereld. De filosofie van Bruno Latour.