Noah Roderick The Being of Analogy Noah Roderick The Being of Analogy

284 Pages·2016·5.4 MB·English

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Modern physics replaced the dualism of
matter and form with a new distinction
between matter and force. In this way form
was marginalized, and with it the related
notion of the object. Noah Roderick’s
book is a refreshing effort to reverse the
consequences of this now banal mainstream
materialism. Ranging from physics through
literature to linguistics, spanning philosophy
from East to West, and weaving it all together
in remarkably lucid prose, Roderick intro-
duces a new concept of analogy that sheds
unfamiliar light on such thinkers as Marx,
Deleuze, Goodman, Sellars, and Foucault.
More than a literary device, analogy teaches
us something about being itself.
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS
Cover design by Katherine Gillieson · Illustration by Tammy Lu

The Being of Analogy
New Metaphysics
Series Editors: Graham Harman and Bruno Latour
The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphys-
ics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution
and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analytic-
continental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the
continental reverence for dusty textual monuments. We favor instead the spirit of the intel-
lectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like
an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical ‘sound’
from any nation of the world. The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical
classics, and will consider secondary works of especial force and daring. But our main inter-
est is to stimulate the birth of disturbing masterpieces of twenty-first century philosophy.
Noah Roderick
The Being of Analogy
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS
London 2016
First edition published by Open Humanities Press 2016
Freely available online at http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/the-being-of-analogy
Copyright © 2016 Noah Roderick
This is an open access book, licensed under a Creative Commons By Attribution Share
Alike license. Under this license, authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify,
distribute, and/or copy this book so long as the authors and source are cited and resulting
derivative works are licensed under the same or similar license. No permission is required
from the authors or the publisher. Statutory fair use and other rights are in no way affected
by the above. Read more about the license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
Design by Katherine Gillieson
Cover Illustration by Tammy Lu
The cover illustration is copyright Tammy Lu 2016, used under a
Creative Commons By Attribution license (CC-BY).
PRINT ISBN 978-1-78542-022-1
PDF ISBN 978-1-78542-023-8
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS
Open Humanities Press is an international, scholar-led open access publishing collective
whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available
worldwide.
Contents
Acknowledgements 9
List of Figures 11
Introduction 13
1. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum 29
2. Tricksy Things 72
3. Similarity and Reality 110
4. Empiricism and the Problem of Similarity 121
5. Grammar and Emergence 164
6. The Dynamic Lives of Languages and Genres 196
7. Form and Knowledge 214
8. Marxian Amaterialism 227
9. Know. Fish. Happy. 245
Endnotes 255

For Dad.
Akana shai ankeres ande k’o vast kado lil.