Theory of Identities

François Laruelle proposes a theory of identity rooted in scientific notions of symmetry and chaos, emancipating thought from the philosophical paradigm of Being and reconnecting it with the real world. Unlike most contemporary philosophers, Laruelle does not believe language, history, and the world shape identity but that identity determines our relation to these phenomena.

A new theory that reconciles scientific and philosophical ideas of the self.

François Laruelle is emeritus professor at the University of Paris Ouest, Nanterre La Défense (Paris X), and lectures at the Collège International de Philosophie. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy (2011) and Christo-Fiction: The Ruins of Athens and Jerusalem (Columbia, 2015), and is the director of L'Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale.

Alyosha Edlebi is a translator and Ph.D. candidate at Yale University. He has published articles on Deleuze, Laruelle, Meillassoux, and Simondon in Deleuze Studies, Theory Culture & Society, Qui Parle, and Parrhesia.

John Mullarkey, coeditor of Laruelle and Non-Philosophy:
This excellent translation of Theory of Identities will be invaluable to anyone who wants to understand Laruelle's nonstandard epistemology.

Anthony Paul Smith, author of François Laruelle's Principles of Non-Philosophy: A Critical Introduction and Guide:
Aiming to provide a new practice of philosophy by engaging with scientific concepts in a philosophical way, Theory of Identities opens up a space for truly interdisciplinary projects to develop. Rather than paying mere lip service to interdisciplinarity, Laruelle practices it here in the midst of profound reflections on identity, science, and ethics.

Katarina Kolozova, author of Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy:
Theory of Identities constitutes the most illustrative proof that 'non-philosophy is a synthesis of quantum theory and Marxism.' It is a testimony of the dense complexity of Laruelle's genius combining methodologically uncompromising scientific rigor and transgressiveness of a mystic's glance into what most of us would choose to avert our eyes from: the point where the comfort of neurosis ceases to exist, which is also the place where neurosis reestablishes itself.