2024.01.1 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Tristan Garcia, Laisser être et rendre puissant, Presses Universitaires de France, 2023, 568pp., €29.90 (pbk), ISBN 9782130798941.
Reviewed by Oliver Feltham, American University of Paris
Tristan Garcia is a well-known novelist and essayist in France, and he has made inroads into the realms of metaphysics, ontology, and aesthetics with a series of ambitious works. His latest book, Laisser être et rendre puissant presents itself as a work of both critical metaphysics and ethics. A literal translation of the title in English gives us ‘Let be and make powerful’ which sounds like the second album of a dark metal band from Shropshire, but that should not dissuade the reader. For all its novelty and efforts to catalogue and dismiss all rival ontological and ethical orientations, however, the book ends up giving liberalism a fresh coat of paint.
The book starts with an account of ubiquitous conflict between human beings, a little…
Read the full article which is published on Notre Dame's Philosophical Reviews (external link)
