SG – Modal Philosophy: Politics

About Modal Philosophy: Politics

Sjoerd van Tuinen explores what a newfound existential pluralism means for our understanding, and imagination of politics. If being is differentiated and multiplied according to a potentially unlimited number of modes of existence, we can no longer presuppose that all these ways are commensurable with one another. 'Politics precedes being.' Indeed, by shifting the emphasis from representation to presence, radical contemporary political theory replaces the very notion of sovereignty, along with its destitute institutions, with that of a 'civil war' of 'forms-of-life'. How can this be more than an apocalyptic vision?

About lecture series Modal Philosophy: Nature, Politics, Technology

In three lectures Sjoerd van Tuinen explores what a newfound existential pluralism means for our understanding, and imagination, of nature, politics, and technological design. The notion of mode of existence is central in the newfound existential pluralism and has recently experienced a great diffusion in the critical humanities and social sciences associated with the ‘ ontological turn’ (science and technology studies, social geography, cultural anthropology, anticolonial thought, posthuman feminism etcetera). Speaking of modes of existence entails, firstly, that 'being' is not one mode. We not only speak of multiple beings or things, being also must be repopulated with multiple ways of existence. The mode of existence of a table is not the same as, or comparable to, that of electrons, languages, laws, artworks or gods. Secondly, individual things can exist in more than one mode at once. Contrary to Descartes' famous claim that 'I think, therefore I am', we rarely coincide with ourselves and instead find ourselves participating in different modes - thinking, feeling, strolling etc - to the point that sometimes we not even know if, or in what way, we exist. Thinking in terms of modes of existence thus goes against both the Aristotelian idea of a First Philosophy of being-qua-being, and against the modern idea of an ultimate reality, 'Nature', against which the other modes must be measured. Instead, it provides diplomatic tools for bridging the gaps between worlds without reducing one to the other.

About Sjoerd van Tuinen

Sjoerd van Tuinen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. After his PhD (Ghent 2009) on neo-monadological accounts of the production of subjectivity, he has had visiting affiliations with universities in London, Berlin, Vienna, New York, Princeton and Lisbon. His work is in social and political philosophy, metaphysics, aesthetics and the history of philosophy. Recent monographs: The Dialectic of Ressentiment: Pedagogy of a Concept (Routledge, 2023) and The Philosophy of Mannerism: From Aesthetics to Modal Metaphysics (Bloomsbury, 2022). Van Tuinen has edited over two dozen books, special issues, and films, including Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Speculative Art Histories (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), The Politics of Debt (Zero Books, 2020), and a series of interdisciplinary theory books with V2_Institute for Unstable Media (Rotterdam/NAi Publishers).