The Life Intense

Our lives today are oppressed by the demand that we live, feel and experience with ever greater intensity. We are enticed to try exotic flavors and smells; urged to enjoy a wide range of sexual experiences; pushed to engage in extreme sports and recreational drugs all in the pursuit of some new, unheard-of intensity.
Tristan Garcia argues that such intensity rarely lives up to its promise. It always comes at a price: one that defines the ethical predicament of contemporary life.
The notion of intensity was the hidden key to Garcia's landmark book Form and Object. In The Life Intense, the first part of his ambitious Letting Be trilogy, he begins to develop it in detail. This first book focuses on ethics; the forthcoming volumes will be devoted to politics and then metaphysics.

“Tristan Garcia demonstrates how at the most encompassing level of contemporary social roles lives the Romantic consumerist, forever seeking spiritually heightened experiences: what he like Pater calls intensity . We're all Baudelaires now. Ecological ethics and politics ignores this at its peril: all that talk of efficiency and anti-consumerism seems to want to bypass this inconvenient truth. An ecological future must voyage through intensity...and for that we need maps. Garcia establishes some key coordinates for such a mission.”

Tristan Garcia demonstrates how at the most encompassing level of contemporary social roles lives the Romantic consumerist, forever seeking spiritually heightened experiences: what he like Pater calls intensity. We're all Baudelaires now. Ecological ethics and politics ignores this at its peril: all that talk of efficiency and anti-consumerism seems to want to bypass this inconvenient truth. An ecological future must voyage through intensity...and for that we need maps. Garcia establishes some key coordinates for such a mission.--Timothy Morton, author of Being Ecological

Tristan Garcia is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lyon and an award-winning novelist. He is the author of La vie intense: Une obsession moderne, translated into English as The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Forme et objet. Un traité des choses (PUF, 2011), translated into English as Form and Object: A Treatise on Things (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). His other philosophical works include L'Image and Nous. His fictional works include Les cordelettes de Browser, En l'absence de classement final and Mémoires de la jungle. In 2008, he received the Prix de Flore for La meilleure part des hommes, translated into English as Hate: A Romance.

Abigail RayAlexander is Assistant Professor of French at Kennesaw State University

Christopher RayAlexander is an independent scholar

Jon Cogburn is Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University. He is co-translator of The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession. Together with Mark Ohm, he is the co-translator of Tristan Garcia's Form and Object, and is the author of Garcian Meditations: The Dialectics of Persistence in Form and Object (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

Our lives today are oppressed by the demand that we live, feel and experience all things with ever greater intensity. We are enticed to try exotic flavors and smells, urged to enjoy a wide range of sexual experiences, and pushed to engage in extreme sports and recreational drugs: all in the name of achieving some new, unheard-of intensity.Tristan Garcia argues that such intensity rarely lives up to its promise. It always comes at a price, one that defines the ethical predicament of contemporary life.The notion of intensity was the hidden key to Garcia's landmark book Form and Object, but was not developed there in detail. In The Life Intense, he gives us the first part of his ambitious Letting Be trilogy on the role of intensity. The focus here is on ethics, with the remaining volumes devoted to politics and then metaphysics.Tristan Garcia is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lyon.Abigail RayAlexander is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Southern Indiana.Christopher RayAlexander is Adjunct Professor of Spanish at the University of Southern Indiana.Jon Cogburn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University.

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