Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism

ADRIAN JOHNSTON is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta. He is the author of seven books, including Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive, Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change, and Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume One: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy, all published by Northwestern University Press.

“This is a remarkable work of epic proportions, in which Johnston describes the origins of what he calls ‘transcendental materialism’ in Hegel’s proposal that Spirit arises from Nature. Equally significant is the way Johnston enhances Hegel with the best insights from Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Freud, Lenin, Lukács, Lacan, and Althusser, resulting in a very powerful and highly original ‘dialectical naturalism’ for our times.”— Andrew Cole, author of The Birth of Theory“Adrian Johnston’s sweeping project of Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism has hardly any match regarding its ambition, goal, and scope. With a sovereign ease, it crosses all the usual boundaries, taking its cue from both the continental and the analytical traditions, from psychoanalysis and neuroscience, from German idealism and scientific naturalism, from Marxism and poststructuralism. An essential read.”— Mladen Dolar, author of A Voice is Nothing More“Adrian Johnston’s trilogy Prolegomena To Any Future Materialism promises to achieve the most important confrontation between continental and analytic philosophy ever written. In this second volume, Johnston pursues the elaboration of a materialist yet nonreductionist theory of subjectivity. He discusses with Hegel, Marx, McDowell, Brandom, and so many others the 'underground current of naturalism' that haunts philosophy today and powerfully outlines a new definition of freedom.”— Catherine Malabou, author of What Should We Do With Our Brain?“Adrian Johnston is one of the most original philosophers of his generation. This second tome of Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism will provide food for thought for many years to come. Who else can combine a defense of Engels's dialectic of nature with Hegel's materialist underside? Who else can leap from Soviet science to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, from Nancy Cartwright to the late Lukács, or from John McDowell to the canonical Althusser?”— Bruno Bosteels, author of Badiou and Politics“Adrian Johnston is one of the most innovative and audacious continental philosophers writing today. Over the past decade, he has developed an original theoretical synthesis of remarkable sophistication. This volume is a significant addition to his already impressive body of work.”— Ray Brassier, author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction?

• Preface. Repeating Engels: Renewing the Cause of the Materialist Wager for the Twenty-First CenturyIntroduction: Tales of the Endangered Dead: Historical Essays in an Underground Current of NaturalismPart I. The Voiding of Weak Nature: The Transcendental Materialist Kernels of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature Chapter 1. Revivifying Hegel: Breathing New Life into Naturphilosophie2. From Bern to Jena: The Oldest Agenda of Hegelianism3. The Self-Subversion of Modern Science: Scientific Reason and the Phenomenology of Spirit4. Real Genesis: From the Natural to the Logical, and Back Again5. The Dialectics of Impotent Nature: Substance and Subject in the System of the Mature HegelPart II. From Scientific Socialism to Socialist Science: The Dialectics of Nature Then and Now6. The Specter of Engels: The Obscured History of Marxism’s Philosophies of Science7. This is orthodox Marxism: The Shared Materialist Weltanschauung of Marx and Engels8. The Three Fathers of Naturdialektitk: Engels, Dietzgen, Lenin9. Breaking and Bridging: Althusserian Syntheses of Historical and Dialectical Materialisms10. Western Marxism’s Self-Critique: Lukács’s Final Ontological VerdictPart III. Negativity Mystical and Material: Privative Causality from Pico Della Mirandola to Lacan11. The Privation of Science: Lacking Causes12. There is absence, and then there are absences: Back to Kant, Forward to Lacan, and Onward13. The Night of the Living World: The Missing Link of the Anorganic14. Split Brain, Split Subject: Critically Approaching a Possible Lacanian Neuro-Psychoanalysis15. The Myth of the Non-Given: The Positive Genesis of the NegativePart IV. Second Natures in Dappled Worlds: Neo-Hegelianism and Philosophy of Science in the Analytic Tradition16. Lacan avec McDowell: The Unresolved Problem of Naturalism17. From the Subjectivity of Transcendental Idealism to the Objectivity of Absolute Idealism: Returning to Kant and Hegel18. Between Bald Naturalism and Rampant Platonism: Relaxing Into McDowell’s Third Way19. More is      less: Psychoanalysis, Science, and the Decompletion of First Nature20. Piebald Naturalism: Freedom in   Cartwright’s Image of NaturePostface. Points of Forced Freedom: Eleven (More) Theses on MaterialismNotesBibliographyIndex