An Inquiry into Modes of Existence

[An Inquiry into Modes of Existence] is not just a book; it is also a project in interactive metaphysics. In other words, a book, plus website… Intrigued readers of Latour’s text can go online [http://www.modesofexistence.org/] and find themselves drawn into a collaborative project. Collective collaboration—some would call it ‘crowdsourcing’—is rare in philosophy, but Latour, a sociologist and anthropologist by training, is used to collaboration with scientists… Latour’s work makes the world—sorry, worlds—interesting again. And, best of all, it is a project to which you can attach yourself. -- Stephen Muecke * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Magnificent… An Inquiry into Modes of Existence shows that [Latour] has lost none of his astonishing fertility as a thinker, or his skill and wit as a writer… Latour’s main message—that rationality is ‘woven from more than one thread’—is intended not just for the academic seminar, but for the public square—and the public square today is global as never before. Thanks to what Bruno Latour describes as the ‘formidable discoveries of modernism,’ we have come to share a world of material interdependence and incessant communication, just at the time when the threat of climate change gives desperate pathos to our common stewardship of the planet. Latour speaks with urgency when he asks us all to set aside the script of secular modernity—to stop insulting each other and learn to pluralize, apologize and ecologize. We must prepare ourselves for diplomacy, he says: we must talk to one another or die. -- Jonathan Rée * Times Literary Supplement *