Philosophy Today

Volume 63, Issue 3, Summer 2019

The Work of Simondon

Jean-Hugues Barthélémy
Pages 745-756

From Genetic Encyclopaedism to Human Ecology

Unlike the free interpretations of Simondon’s genetic encyclopaedism, the constraining exegesis of this doctrine resolves the paradoxes that are essential for it to be constructed in its depth and subtlety. Now, at the root of these simple paradoxes lies what is no longer one, but which constitutes a true contradiction, of a methodological type. That is why today we need an encompassing refounding of Simondon’s genetic ontology, which makes it possible to eliminate the contradiction by transforming this ontology into a translation of a new first problematic, called “archi-reflexive semantics.” Such is the program of the global but radically antidogmatic system of the individuation of (making-)sense, or “human ecology”, the ultimate telos of which is political-economic and articulates itself with a decentered humanism refounding the law outside ethics.