Main entry:

Latour, Bruno.

Title & Author:

An inquiry into modes of existence : an anthropology of the moderns / Bruno Latour ; translated by Catherine Porter.

Publication:

©2013
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2013.

Description:

xxvii, 486 pages ; 24 cm

Notes:
"The book was originally published as Enquête sur les modes d'existence : une anthropologie des Modernes."
Part 1. How to make an inquiry into the modes of existence of the moderns possible -- part 2. How to benefit from the Pluralism of modes of existence -- part 3. How to redefine the collectives.
Translated from the French.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

In this new book, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern, a work that interrogated the connections between nature and culture. If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the past twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated - a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to "capital-S Science" as a higher authority. Such modes of extension - or modes of existence, Latour argues here - account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge. Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis. -- from book jacket.

ISBN:

9780674724990 (alk. paper)
0674724992 (alk. paper)
9780674984028 (pbk.)
0674984021 (pbk.)

Subject:

Civilization, Modern Philosophy.
Philosophical anthropology.
Anthropologie philosophique.
philosophical anthropology.
Modes de vie.
Culture.
Civilisations.
Modernisation.
Innovations.
Philosophy.
Cultuur.
Filosofische antropologie.
Menselijk bestaan.
Filosofisk antropologi.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 285279
Call No.: BIB 224685
Status: Available