Abstract

How does the ontological turn in anthropology redefine what modern, Western ontology is in practice, and offer the beginnings of a new ontological pluralism?

On a planet that is increasingly becoming a single, metaphysically homogeneous world, anthropology remains one of the few disciplines that recognizes that being has been thought with very different concepts and can still be rendered in terms quite different than those placed on it today. Yet despite its critical acuity, even the most philosophically oriented anthropology often remains segregated from philosophical discussions aimed at rethinking such terms. What would come of an anthropology more fully committed to being a source of (post-) philosophical concepts? What would happen to philosophy if it began to think with and through these concepts? How, finally, does comparison condition these two projects ? This book addresses these questions from a variety of perspectives, all of which nonetheless hold in common the view that “philosophy” has been displaced and altered by the modes of thought of other collectives. An international group of authors, including Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marilyn Strathern, Philippe Descola, and Bruno Latour, explore how the new anthropology/philosophy conjuncture opens new horizons of critique.
This is an exceptionally stimulating collection of essays by seriously brilliant writers. If you think the ontological turn is simply something to be for or against this is not for you. But if you are after some powerfully reflexive thinking that puts the comparative at the foundation of existence then this will not only make you ‘turn’, it will make you jump, dig tunnels and fly.
Ghassan Hage FAHA, Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory, University of Melbourne
Inspired the turn among some anthropologists away from culture and nature, the editors of Comparative Metaphysics gather together a who's who of contemporary French, British, and American philosophy and anthropology to ask what discipline has the best chance to define the multiple, irreducible forms of thought that count as ontology and thus to open thought to the crisis of contemporary anthropogenic climate change.
Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University

In short, this more or less voluminous book. . . is of great importance to those interested in some of the most important debates of contemporary anthropology in general. [Translated from original Spanish]

Pierre Charbonnier is a researcher in Philosophy at the National Center for Scientific Research, EHESS, Paris.
Gildas Salmon is a researcher in Philosophy at the National Center for Scientific Research, EHESS, Paris.
Peter Skafish is a maître de conférences associé at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale and the Collège de France, Paris.
the collection assembles an impressive cast of anthropologists and philosophers from across the Anglo-French academic divide ... a profound disciplinary recomposition arising from the encounter between anthropology and philosophy.