Table of Contents

Preface 1. The Double Topology 1.1 The Poetic Topology 1.2 The Mathematico-Technological Topology 2. The Idea-Matter-Matrix 3. What Is: 3.1 Technology 3.2 Capital 3.3 Medium 3.4 The TCM Universal 3.4.1 The Scientific Universal 3.4.2 The Human Universal 3.4.3 The Natural Universal 3.4.4 The First Universal Hierarchy 3.4.5 The Second Universal Hierarchy: Quantity ? Quality 3.4.51 Excursus: Quantity and Time 4. The Universal and the Universal Topology 5. The Universal Subject 5.1 The Subject before the TCM Universal: Solipsism and Intimacy 5.2 The Subject within the TCM Universal: Indifference and Normality 6. Pragma-Politics 7. The Final Revolution 8. Anachronisms 9. The Double Topology and the Museum 10. Patho-topo-logy 10.1 The Patho-topo-logy of the Subject in the TCM Universal I 10.2 The Patho-topo-logy of the Subject in the TCM Universal II: Loss 11. The Differentiated Subject/Violence 12. Intimacy and Freedom 13. Philosophy as Impossibility Note on the Wittgenstein Citation Notes

Promotional Information

A major work from acclaimed German philosopher Peter Trawny, this book asks how we could challenge the structures of late capitalism, if all possible media through which we might do so are inescapably capitalist.

About the Author

Peter Trawny is Professor of Philosophy at Bergische University, Wuppertal, Germany. A specialist in phenomenological and hermeneutical political philosophy and aesthetics, he is the author of books on Heidegger, Hegel, Arendt, and Plato, and a co-editor of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, or the complete works (vol. 35, 69.73, 90). Richard Lambert is a translator based in Berlin. He gained his PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick.

Reviews

On Freedom gives us a stark and striking vision of the modern global order. By emphasizing the necessity and seamlessness of our technological, economic, and communicative systems, Peter Trawny paradoxically incites us to dream of something else: a realm of genuine freedom, “impossible” though it may be. Taking inspiration from figures such as Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger but contributing telling insights of his own, Trawny has produced a disturbing, provocative book.
*Richard Polt, Professor of Philosophy, Xavier University, USA*

Trawny is familiar to many in the English speaking world as the editor of Heidegger’s infamous Black Notebooks. He has also published incisive and original works that deal frontally and without subterfuge or apologetics with Heidegger’s – now established beyond any doubt – anti-Semitism. Yet, Trawny is more than an editor and exegete. He is also an original philosopher, writing in arresting German, beautifully captured in his excellent translation by Richard Lambert. Marcuse sought to synthesize Marx and Heidegger in the early thirties of the last century, before he had to escape from Nazi Germany. Habermas carried the challenge by turning away from Heidegger and taking up Searle, Wittgenstein, Mead, and Durkheim, while leaving behind Marx. This book aims to show how we can philosophize about our modern condition, while updating and renewing Marx, Marcuse, Habermas and Derrida, in one heady and poetic synthesis. For Marx, economics was part of philosophy, because it was about elucidating the impossible possibility of freedom. Trawny shows us how we can think freedom from out of our new conditions of necessity: the entanglement of Technology, Capital, and the ever emergent media of the technological medium.
*Eduardo Mendieta, Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor in the School of International Affairs, Penn State University, USA*