Description: In a new approach to philosophical anthropology, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern: If not modern, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? An Inquiry into Modes of Existence offers a new basis for diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time of ecological crisis.
Brief description: Bruno Latour was Professor Emeritus at Sciences Po Paris. He was the 2021 Kyoto Prize Laureate in Arts and Philosophy and was awarded the 2013 Holberg International Memorial Prize.
Review Quotes: Magnificent... An Inquiry into Modes of Existence shows that [Latour] has lost none of his astonishing fertility as a thinker, or his skill and wit as a writer... Latour's main message--that rationality is 'woven from more than one thread'--is intended not just for the academic seminar, but for the public square--and the public square today is global as never before. Thanks to what Bruno Latour describes as the 'formidable discoveries of modernism, ' we have come to share a world of material interdependence and incessant communication, just at the time when the threat of climate change gives desperate pathos to our common stewardship of the planet. Latour speaks with urgency when he asks us all to set aside the script of secular modernity--to stop insulting each other and learn to pluralize, apologize and ecologize. We must prepare ourselves for diplomacy, he says: we must talk to one another or die.--Jonathan Rée "Times Literary Supplement" (1/10/2014 12:00:00 AM)