Overview

What are we to think as we facing the sixth extinction moment? Kant's invitation to imagine an 'end of all things' no longer feels like just a thought experiment. Philosopher Ben Ware argues that we must accept this without looking away. In fact, extinction is the very lens through which we see our current reality. He argues that in order to map the catastrophic present, we will first need to take a tiger's leap into the past in order to construct a new 'dialectics of extinctions'. On Extinction takes us on a breath-taking philosophical journey. Bringing dialectical thought to bear on one of the most pressing issues of our times, Ware argues that radical politics today should not be concerned with merely averting the worst, but rather with beginning again at the end: bringing to completion a mode of political and economic life which tethers us all - the yet to be born - to a sick but undying present. To think about the future in this way is itself a form of liberation that might incubate the necessary radical solutions we need.

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9781788739993

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Reviews

A sweeping tour of our crisis present, tracing its roots and our responses through a series of philosophical meditations on the end of the world. Ben Ware offers a series of incisive and unforgiving readings that guide and impel us through the wreckage of contemporary capitalism. This is a work of paradoxical hopefulness: one that struggles against the ideological forces of despair and nihilism by confronting them in all their depth.' -- Benjamin Noys As humanity enters its endgame, apparently incapable of extricating itself from the catastrophic logic of capital, how can we reorganise our relationship to history and begin again? In this bold, fast-moving philosophical essay, which is as elegant and erudite as it is forcefully argued, Ben Ware develops not simply an aesthetics or ethics of extinction but a politics capable of responding to its almost unthinkable existential challenge. This is a brilliant book, bristling with both provocative ideas and perceptive, often unexpected readings of writers, philosophers and film-makers -- Matthew Beaumont, author of <i>The Walker</i>

On Extinction is a formidable intervention. The end is too serious a matter to be treated as tragedy or heroic sacrifice; rather, as Ben Ware shows, thinking it requires the materialist dialectic and its predilection for comedy: stubbornly beginning again, and again. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of <i>What IS Sex?</i> A sweeping tour of our crisis present.Ben Ware offers a series of incisive and unforgiving readings that guide and impel us through the wreckage of contemporary capitalism. -- Benjamin Noys, author of <i>The Matter of Language</i> An important book for our time. On Extinction follows what the late Gustav Metzger always told me: it is not enough to talk about climate change, we have to talk about extinction. -- Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director Serpentine Galleries, London Ben Ware's wonderfully lucid new book exposes the diabolical evil of the cult of capitalism in its limitless assault on life in all its forms. It is by going through the disaster that we will find the path to planetary liberation. An essentially, urgently necessary intervention. -- Richard Seymour, author of <i>The Disenchanted Earth</i> Carefully researched, tightly constructed, and broadly accessible, Ware's argument is both subversive and indispensable. Whatever happens next, one thing is sure: this path-breaking book by one of the sharpest minds in contemporary philosophy will live on for a very long time. -- Dany Nobus, author of <i>Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason</i> How should critical theory address the multiple catastrophes raging through the planet - war, pandemic, climate chaos, and the like - and the threat of human extinction that they pose? Ben Ware offers a lucid, illuminating, and erudite response of great value in recalibrating our thinking to address the terrifying world we now inhabit -- Alex Callinicos, author of <i>The New Age of Catastrophe</i> What philosopher Ben Ware is asking, then, is for us to imagine-to internalize-the reality of human finitude, the end of us. Only then, he suggests, will we be able to take in the full horizon of what we've wrought and, perhaps, move forward into a new and radical version of our shared future. * Lit Hub *

Praise for Living Wrong Life Rightly * : * Ware reveals the ethical moment of negativity: the possibility of thinking the collective dimension of life. Resisting the narcissism of our times, this book powerfully restates the necessity of critique as a means to repair our damaged language and so to start to repair our damaged world. -- Benjamin Noys Ware applies his vast philosophical and literary culture to the task and the resulting analyses are superb...It will be difficult to talk about contemporary ethics without taking his work into account -- Jean-Jacques Lecercle Praise Dialectic of the Ladder * : * Ware's superb study not only offers a compelling and original reading of Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus'; it also situates it with admirable skill in the context of aesthetic modernism and in so doing casts radical new light upon this notoriously difficult philosophical text -- Terry Eagleton

Ware reveals the ethical moment of negativity: the possibility of thinking the collective dimension of life. Resisting the narcissism of our times, this book powerfully restates the necessity of critique as a means to repair our damaged language and so to start to repair our damaged world. -- Benjamin Noys * [for Living Wrong Life Rightly] * Ware applies his vast philosophical and literary culture to the task and the resulting analyses are superb.It will be difficult to talk about contemporary ethics without taking his work into account -- Jean-Jacques Lecercle * [for Living Wrong Life Rightly] * Ware's superb study not only offers a compelling and original reading of Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus'; it also situates it with admirable skill in the context of aesthetic modernism and in so doing casts radical new light upon this notoriously difficult philosophical text -- Terry Eagleton * [for Dialectic of the Ladder] *

A sweeping tour of our crisis present, tracing its roots and our responses through a series of philosophical meditations on the end of the world. Ben Ware offers a series of incisive and unforgiving readings that guide and impel us through the wreckage of contemporary capitalism. This is a work of paradoxical hopefulness: one that struggles against the ideological forces of despair and nihilism by confronting them in all their depth.' -- Benjamin Noys

On Extinction is a formidable intervention. The end is too serious a matter to be treated as tragedy or heroic sacrifice; rather, as Ben Ware shows, thinking it requires the materialist dialectic and its predilection for comedy: stubbornly beginning again, and again. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of <i>What is Sex?</i> A sweeping tour of our crisis present.Ben Ware offers a series of incisive and unforgiving readings that guide and impel us through the wreckage of contemporary capitalism. -- Benjamin Noys, author of <i>The Matter of Language</i> An important book for our time. On Extinction follows what the late Gustav Metzger always told me: it is not enough to talk about climate change, we have to talk about extinction. -- Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director Serpentine Galleries, London Ben Ware's wonderfully lucid new book exposes the diabolical evil of the cult of capitalism in its limitless assault on life in all its forms. It is by going through the disaster that we will find the path to planetary liberation. An essentially, urgently necessary intervention. -- Richard Seymour, author of <i>The Disenchanted Earth</i> Carefully researched, tightly constructed, and broadly accessible, Ware's argument is both subversive and indispensable. Whatever happens next, one thing is sure: this path-breaking book by one of the sharpest minds in contemporary philosophy will live on for a very long time. -- Dany Nobus, author of <i>Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason</i>

On Extinction is a formidable intervention. The end is too serious a matter to be treated as tragedy or heroic sacrifice; rather, as Ben Ware shows, thinking it requires the materialist dialectic and its predilection for comedy: stubbornly beginning again, and again. -- Alenka Zupancic, author of <i>What IS Sex?</i> A sweeping tour of our crisis present.Ben Ware offers a series of incisive and unforgiving readings that guide and impel us through the wreckage of contemporary capitalism. -- Benjamin Noys, author of <i>The Matter of Language</i> An important book for our time. On Extinction follows what the late Gustav Metzger always told me: it is not enough to talk about climate change, we have to talk about extinction. -- Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director Serpentine Galleries, London Ben Ware's wonderfully lucid new book exposes the diabolical evil of the cult of capitalism in its limitless assault on life in all its forms. It is by going through the disaster that we will find the path to planetary liberation. An essentially, urgently necessary intervention. -- Richard Seymour, author of <i>The Disenchanted Earth</i> Carefully researched, tightly constructed, and broadly accessible, Ware's argument is both subversive and indispensable. Whatever happens next, one thing is sure: this path-breaking book by one of the sharpest minds in contemporary philosophy will live on for a very long time. -- Dany Nobus, author of <i>Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason</i> How should critical theory address the multiple catastrophes raging through the planet - war, pandemic, climate chaos, and the like - and the threat of human extinction that they pose? Ben Ware offers a lucid, illuminating, and erudite response of great value in recalibrating our thinking to address the terrifying world we now inhabit -- Alex Callinicos, author of <i>The New Age of Catastrophe</i> What philosopher Ben Ware is asking, then, is for us to imagine-to internalize-the reality of human finitude, the end of us. Only then, he suggests, will we be able to take in the full horizon of what we've wrought and, perhaps, move forward into a new and radical version of our shared future. * Lit Hub * In this bold, fast-moving philosophical essay, which is as elegant and erudite as it is forcefully argued, Ben Ware develops not simply an aesthetics or ethics of extinction but a politics capable of responding to its almost unthinkable existential challenge. This is a brilliant book, bristling with both provocative ideas and perceptive, often unexpected readings. -- Matt Beaumontt, author of <i>How We Walk</i> In On Extinction, Ben Ware writes towards a collective time liberated from the paradoxical, narcissistic apocalypse narratives of the 21st century: that it is both too late for the planet and that we must urgently act now to save it. -- Autumn Wright * Bullet Points *

Author Information

Ben Ware is Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art at King’s College London where he is also a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy. He is the author of Dialectic of the Ladder: Wittgenstein, the ‘Tractatus’ and Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2015); Living Wrong Life Rightly: Modernism, Ethics, and the Political Imagination (Palgrave, 2017); and editor of Francis Bacon: Painting, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis (Thames & Hudson, 2019). His recent essays have appeared in e-flux journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and ESP magazine.

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