Latour-Stengers

This book explores the profound friendship and intellectual synergy between Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, showcasing their contributions to philosophy and science.

Certain great friendships have left their mark in the annals of philosophy, and without a doubt, the friendship of Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers is among them. Although they wrote very few texts together, their intellectual companionship lasted for over thirty years, and their respective work can be fully understood only when the many interconnections of their thought are brought to the fore.

Latour and Stengers occupy the same starting place, which remains at the heart of their work: scientific practice, the pride of modernity. This raises a profound question: why do we Moderns define ourselves as those who know, while others are condemned to be only believers? This inquiry led both thinkers to confront a fundamental issue: how to understand and navigate what Latour refers to as the new climatic regime and what Stengers describes as catastrophic times?

Philippe Pignarre's aim is not to sort out which ideas belong to whom but rather to interweave their thought even more. In doing so, he sheds new light on the origins and development of their work while documenting an exceptional intellectual adventure between two of the leading thinkers of our age. Latour-Stengers is a testament to their enduring influence and the richness of their shared intellectual journey.