Branches: A Philosophy of Time, Event and Advent

209 Pages·2020·6.07 MB·English

by  Michel Serres

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Branches
A Philosophy of Time, Event
and Advent
Michel Serres
Translated by Randolph Burks
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First published in 2004 in France as Rameaux, by Michel Serres © Editions
Le Pommier, 2004
English language translation © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020
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To those who did me the honour
of attending my courses
vi
Contents
Preface viii
System 1
Format-father 3
Science-daughter 33
The adoptive son 60
Narrative 95
Event 97
Advent 126
Today 160
Notes 193
Bibliography 197
Preface
Today’s world is screaming in pain because it is beginning
its childbirth labour. At serious risk, we have to invent new
relations between humans and the totality of what conditions
life: the inert planet, the climate, living species, visible things
and invisible things, sciences and technologies, the global
community, morality and politics, education and health … We
are leaving our world for other worlds, possible ones, and will
have to abandon a hundred passions, ideas, customs and norms
brought about by our narrow historical duration. We are entering
into an evolutionary branch.1
In previous ages, no knowledge had ever had to conceive or
lead projects that were as vital: reinventing the universality of
the individual, reconfiguring his habitat, weaving new relations.
From having to rethink everything, philosophy changes span
and sees its responsibility grow. Either a new human, a citizen of
the world, will appear, or humanity will totter. We have to bring
about peace between ourselves to safeguard the world and peace
with the world in order to save ourselves.
System