Energy Dreams

Energy is something that pervades all our concerns from ecological to libidinal: we dream about clean renewable energy, condemn fracking, gain strength through energy drinks. Michael Marder's Energy Dreams moves beyond these topics and asks a more fundamental hermeneutic question: what understanding of energy is presupposed in our mundane concerns? He demonstrates brilliantly that we need a new philosophical paradigm and that only in this way will we be able to properly confront all the practical problems in our dealings with energy. Marder's book makes it clear that only a deeper theoretical reflection will enable us to solve our most "practical" problems-a lesson needed like daily bread in today's world, which more and more abhors authentic thinking. -- Slavoj Zizek, author of Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil Energy Dreams is an intellectually fascinating and exciting investigation of energy, and it represents a new generation of environmental thinking that tackles the environmental crisis with philosophical sophistication and adventurousness. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary debates in environmental and political philosophy. -- Adrian Parr, author of The Wrath of Capital Energy Dreams is a passionate philosophical page-turner, a beautifully rendered and urgently needed elemental philosophy of non-violence that journeys to the very heart of how we imagine our relationships to ourselves, each other, our worlds, and the earth itself. Marder's vegetal thinking is visionary. -- Kelly Oliver, author of Earth and World: Philosophy After the Apollo Missions Michael Marder's Energy Dreams is a book on energeia, broadly conceived, a reflectively literal tour de force, moving through Aristotle to Hegel, including the many contemporary and historical meanings of energy, touching down with Heidegger and even Carl Schmitt but always returning to Aristotle. Marder offers a conversational yet rigorous reflection on some the most important issues of our time. -- Babette Babich, Fordham University

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and professor-at-large in the Humanities Institute at the University of Diego Portales, Chile. His recent books include Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium (2014), and, with Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives (2016).

Opening Words 1. Energy Dreams 2. Theological Musings 3. Economic Chimeras 4. Psychological Reveries 5. Political Fantasies 6. Physical Fancies The Last Word: Energy or Energies? P.S.-The Very Last Word Notes Works Cited Index