Tom Sparrow Books

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Sparrow deftly guides his readers into the art of living happily.

In the 20th century, phenomenology promised a method that would get philosophy 'back to the things themselves'. But phenomenology has always been haunted by the spectre of an anthropocentric antirealism. Tom Sparrow shows how, in the 21st century, speculative realism aims to do what phenomenology could not: provide a philosophical method that disengages the human-centred approach to metaphysics in order to chronicle the complex realm of nonhuman reality. Through a focused reading of the methodological statements and metaphysical commitments of key phenomenologists and speculative realists, Sparrow shows how speculative realism is replacing phenomenology as the beacon of realism in contemporary Continental philosophy. He draws on phenomenologists including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, speculative realism's original creators Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier and Iain Hamilton Grant and key figures in speculative realism's second wave, including Ian Bogost and Timothy Morton.

Levinas Unhinged presents philosopher Emmanuel Levinas as a metaphysician racked by the sensuous, and often terrifying, materiality of existence.

Focusing on the concept of sensation, the book explores a diverse range of texts from ancient to contemporary, incorporating insights from philosophers like Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. It aims to reconstruct the understanding of sensation through a speculative aesthetics that combines realism with a philosophy of embodiment, challenging traditional notions of the "lived" body. This work invites readers to rethink the relationship between sensation and embodiment in both philosophical and aesthetic contexts.