Iain Hamilton Grant

Iain Hamilton Grant is a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England in Bristol, United Kingdom. His research interests include European philosophy, especially philosophical Idealism, contemporary philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of technology, the philosophy of the body, and the history and problems associated with the autonomization of the human and socio-cultural sciences with respect to the physical. He is often associated with the recent philosophical current known as Speculative Realism.^[1]

Grant was initially known as a translator of the prominent French philosophers Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard. His reputation as an independent philosopher comes primarily from his book Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (2006). In this book, Grant heavily criticizes the repeated attempts of philosophers to "reverse Platonism," and argues that they should try to reverse Kant instead. He is highly critical of the recent prominence of ethics and the philosophy of life in continental philosophy, which in his view merely reinforce the undue privilege of human being. Against these trends, Grant calls for a renewed treatment of the inorganic realm.^[2]

Grant views Plato and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling as his major allies among classic philosophical figures, and generally opposes both Aristotle and Kant for what he sees as their tendency to reduce reality to its expressibility for humans.

Grant is not only influenced by Plato and Schelling but the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as well.

Bibliography

Original works

• Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (London and New York: Continuum, 2006)^[3]

English translations

• Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, transl. by Iain Hamilton Grant (London: Sage, 1993).
• Jean-François Lyotard, The Libidinal Economy, transl. by Iain Hamilton Grant (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

References

External links

• University of the West of England Philosophy website, Staff page
• Profile at the University of the West of England
• Webpage for Collapse journal featuring contributions by Iain Hamilton Grant and other "speculative realists"