The Philosophy of Matter

It is a rare book that can be, at once, so seismically unsettling and yet so sumptuously composed. The world is breaking, broken. By deftly tracking among and between the cracks that are everywhere – in literature, philosophy, dance, architecture, the earth’s surface and substrata – Rick Dolphijn’s meditation should be profoundly melancholic (and often it is) but it arrives with the Spinozist grace of a benediction. * Gregory J. Seigworth, Professor of Digital Communication & Cultural Studies, Millersville University, USA *
Rather than choosing to be a polarizing book by virtue of veering off to the extremes of posthumanism or humanism, Rick Dolphijn’s The Philosophy of Matter is a much more subtle and mindful exercise in ameliorating and mending the great schism between the two. Through a wealth of literary, cultural, and theoretical cases and arguments, Dolphijn advocates a critical humanism that rises from the ashes of the old form of humanism through the combined forces of imagination and critique afforded to it by an account of nature that enriches the human and its interactions with the world of which it is a part. In doing so, such an account of nature actively reinvents not only what the non-human can be but also what we historically consider the human to be. * Reza Negarestani, author of "Intelligence and Spirit" *
A concise yet focused book delving into the relationship between the turbulent life we currently live and the planet. * Digital University Magazine, Utrecht University *