French Philosophy Today: New Figures of the Human in Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Serres and Latour

A comparative critique of the human in Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Catherine Malabou, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour Contemporary French philosophy is laying fresh claim to the human. Through a series of independent, simultaneous initiatives, arising in the writing of diverse current French thinkers, the figure of the human is being transformed and reworked. Christopher Watkin draws out both the promises and perils inherent in these attempts to rethink humanity's relation to 'nature' and 'culture', to the objects that surround us, to the possibility of social and political change, to ecology and even to our own brains. This comparative assessment makes visible for the first time one of the most important trends in French thought today.