Few thinkers have been as influential upon current discussions and theoretical practices in the age of media archaeology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities as the French thinker Gilbert Simondon. Simondon’s prolific intellectual curiosity led his philosophical and scientific reflections to traverse a variety of areas of research, including philosophy, psychology, the beginnings of cybernetics, and the foundations of religion. For Simondon, the human/machine distinction is perhaps not a simple dichotomy. There is much we can learn from our technical objects, and while it has been said that humans have an alienating rapport with technical objects, Simondon takes up the task of a true thinker who sees the potential for humanity to uncover life-affirming modes of technical objects whereby we can discover potentiality for novel, healthful, and dis-alienating rapports with them. For Simondon, by way of studying its genesis, one must grant to the technical object the same ontological status as that of the aesthetic object or even a living being. His work thus opens up exciting new entry points into studying the human’s rapport with its continually changing technical reality. This first complete English-language translation of Gilbert Simondon’s groundbreaking and influential work finally presents to Anglophone readers one of the pinnacle works of France’s most unique thinkers of technics.

- 编辑推荐 -
★深受吉尔·德勒兹、菲利克斯·加塔利、贝尔纳·斯蒂格勒、布鲁诺·拉图尔推崇的哲学家——吉尔伯特·西蒙东首部正式出版的中译本。
★在其哲学名著《个体及其物理—生物起源》中，西蒙东自问：“心理与生命是如何彼此相互区分的呢？”为求其解，他感到有必要首先回顾动物与人的生命观念。在本书中，西蒙东就生命、动物与人的生命之间的统一性，还有生命与智性、习惯、本能之间的关系提出了问题，为我们呈现了古往今来的思想家如何对此展开思考。
★动物与人的关系是什么？苏格拉底会说：人类理性与动物本能之间存在本质差别。柏拉图会说：人是一切动物的原型，动物是低等级的人。笛卡尔会说：动物既无智性亦无本能，它是一台机器、一种自动之物。西蒙东则会回答：动物与人之间并没有本质区别，一切都是存在，我们每一次都必须以特定的方式思考存在的意义。
- 内容简介 -
本书脱胎于吉尔伯特·西蒙东两次课程的讲稿，主要探讨动物与人的关系问题。这虽然算不上哲学的根本问题，却一再闪现于古往今来诸多哲学巨擘的思想图景之中。在书中，西蒙东为我们梳理了该问题从古希腊罗马时期一直到17世纪的简明历史。他不仅论及了苏格拉底、柏拉图、亚里士多德和笛卡尔等哲学史上最重要人物的相关思想，还谈到了许多不常被哲学家们触探的作者，如亚西西的圣方济各、蒙田、博须埃和拉封丹等人的相关著述。西蒙东没有执着于将诸学说的论述推至艰深晦涩的抽象层面，而是从观念的历史维度切入，清晰地为我们呈现了不同流派的学说对该问题的提出与解决而做的贡献。从中，我们可以看到，动物与人的关系问题不仅牵涉认识论的维度，还广泛地包括了伦理，甚至宗教，以及最终的形而上学的维度。

Gilbert Simondon (1924--1989), one of the most influential contemporary French philosophers, published only three works: L'individu et sa genese physico-biologique (The individual and its physico-biological genesis, 1964) and L'individuation psychique et collective (Psychic and collective individuation, 1989), both drawn from his doctoral thesis, and Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (On the mode of existence of technical objects, 1958). It is this last work that brought Simondon into the public eye; as a consequence, he has been considered a "thinker of technics" and cited often in pedagogical reports on teaching technology. Yet Simondon was a philosopher whose ambitions lay in an in-depth renewal of ontology as a process of individuation--that is, how individuals come into being, persist, and transform. In this accessible yet rigorous introduction to Simondon's work, Muriel Combes helps to bridge the gap between Simondon's account of technics and his philosophy of individuation. Some thinkers have found inspiration in Simondon's philosophy of individuation, notably Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Combes's account, first published in French in 1999, is one of the only studies of Simondon to appear in English. Combes breaks new ground, exploring an ethics and politics adequate to Simondon's hypothesis of preindividual being, considering through the lens of transindividual philosophy what form a nonservile relation to technology might take today. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Simondon's work.