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Description
There may exist something like the most unbearable of all philosophical thoughts.
It is the thought of contingency and universality converging, intersecting, and being one and the same thing, approached from two different perspectives. Indeed, hardly anything is as unsettling as the realisation of the absolute contingency of the emergence of universals – and the correlative realization that the only true universality is the contingency of everything.
Against the entire tradition of Western thought, which has sought to anchor universal truth in transcendent laws and eternal forms, The Contingent Universality proposes a radical inversion. Jure Simoniti thinks the unbearable thought through to the end, facing up to its most binding and disconcerting consequences, and sets forth a bold new ontology – an ontology of continent universality.
The philosophy of Slavoj Žižek is central to this project, and The Contingent Universality sets out to finally accomplish the ontology of negative logical space that is implicit throughout his work. Tracing a sweeping intellectual arc from Plato and Aristotle through Kant, Fichte, and Hegel to contemporary thinkers such as Derrida, Badiou, the book reconstructs the hidden history of this idea: that every universal was once a contingent singularity. In doing so, it provides new answers to questions on the nature of contingency, necessity, predictability of the future, the validity of the laws of nature, the role of singularity in relation to universality, chaos and order, reality and truth.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
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The publication contains no hazards
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- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
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Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
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- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
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Table of Contents
1. When Did Universality Become Contingent?
2. Žižek's Detours on the Path to Contingent Universality
3. The Neglected Historical Origins of Contingent Universality. The Revolutions of Modern Science
4. Towards a New Ontology of Contingent Universality
5. Eleven New Truths About the World
Product details
| Published | 01 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 9781350514744 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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