Anyone familiar with and interested in mulling over the ideas of Serres?
For those completely unfamiliar, I’ve chucked this up in the hope that it might spark interest…
Michel Serres, born 1930, is one of the most provocative French philosophers of the present. Unlike much recent philosophy from France, which simply ignores science, Serres draws on the discoveries of the sciences, especially thermodynamics and chaos theory, for inspiration.  His understanding of philosophy is, as he puts it, “encyclopedic,” weaving together a syncretic tapestry from a variety of sources including history, painting, literature, mathematics, the sciences and philosophy itself. An absolutely idiosyncratic writer, the most difficult thing about approaching Serres is getting through his texts for the first time. There is nothing of the usual philosophical essay in his output. Instead, his works are extended reflections occasioned by some centerpiece, whether statues, angels, the founding of Rome, parasites, or the five senses.  He refuses to build a synthesis or a system in the usual sense, preferring instead to mount a mosaic which can be frustrating for an interpreter.
A key word for understanding Serres is "irenic." In this sense he is like one of his philosophical heroes Leibniz. Serres is generous not only in incorporating history, literature, the development of mathematics, the sciences, and painting, but in articulating a comprehensive map, he calls it an “atlas,” which liquefies the boundaries between the varied disciplines. Xenophon’s Symposium has Socrates compare the philosopher to a pimp, the ultimate go-between. Serres is not uncomfortable with this description. His prefers another way than “pimp” of getting at this point, though. In his earliest works, he used the mythological figure of Hermes the messenger of Zeus. In later works he has taken to using “angels” from the Greek word for “messenger”, because its plural formation allows for a wide variety of messengers and messsages.
Serres is also irenic in privileging the weak and the fragile. His philosophy is rooted in a sort of neo-Anaximander grasp of things. If we can speak of an origin, then that origin would best be characterized as a blur of possibilities, including the elementals of all there is. Because the Greek a-peiron is necessarily negative, Serres has retrieved an old French word “noise,” a kind of clutter or hubbub, as best capturing the originary blur out of which all things come. Each event or thing then becomes a precious and rare entity, a cluster of conjoined possibilities marking a rare, harmonious organization out of the original clutter. “Being” in this sense is inherently fragile, a brief respite from the hurly-burly out of which all things come and to which they are ever poised to return. Â
Some of the main pivots around which turns the thought of Serres:
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Prepositions–philosophy tends traditionally to deal with substantives or with verbs. Instead of favoring either an ontology of essences or of process, Serres prefers the intersections, interrelations, as prioritary.
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Pharmakons–Plato’s famous comment about the “pharmakon” that it could be both medicine and poison could apply to much of Serres’ philosophy. There are hardly any one-dimensional elements in his philosophical repertoire. The image which best captures this is found in the title of one of his books The Parasite. The parasite is at once necessary for jumbling things up, for change, improvement, and for destructiveness, disintegration.
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Thirds–Serres is an enemy of dilemmas and oppositions. There is always an in-between, a third element that bridges supposed antitheses.The “cultivated third” (le tiers instruit) is the title of the book in which this is developed.Â
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Wandering–unlike Descartes who prescribed staking out a straight line and then sticking to it, Serres prefers a more meandering path as better including what is.  The straight line highway, just get from here to there, simply ignores too much in between. The main rule for philosophy for Serres could well be “leave nothing out”. Because of this, leisurely journeys are more appropriate to the philosopher than direct paths.
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Savorings–philosophy is too trapped in our “second” tongue, that of language. It has forgotten our first tongue, that for tasting. Indeed, homo sapiens means “man the taster”. Before it can articulate a comprehensive grasp of life, philosophy must return to the immediacy of lived experience.  On of Serres’ greatest books les Cinq Sens helps us do this in not only a profound, but in a beautifully written and evocative text.
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Mixing–Modern philosophy was the philosophy of “unveiling”. Too often this was accompanied by an accusatory, prosecutor-like attitude on the part of philosophers. Illusions banished, nature stripped bare, enemies vanquished, appearance and hypocrisy finally put to rest–such were the guiding ideals of modern thought. For Serres, stripping, unveiling, accusing are of little merit.  Taking a lead from the laboratory, he prefers mixing and blending. It is not by eliminating and isolating that we come to the fully real, it is rather by combining, by putting things into play with each other, by letting things interact.Â
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Cords–We have, says Serres, answered the Cartesian question about how to dominate nature, now the question becomes how do we dominate the dominators? The old tragic hero was often undone by an external necessity. Our Promethean developments since the 17th century have placed us under a new necessity, we cannot not affect all there is. Our responsibility is crushing compared to what it was for an Oedipus or an Antigone. Following the “prepositional” ontology, we need to trace our linkages, the “cords” by which we are intertwined and accept responsibility.  The period of accusation, of blame, is now outmoded. We have to ask the question: how do we establish contracts of mutuality with all there is. It can  no longer be with just our locality, because of technological and scientific developments. His book le Contrat Naturel outlines the possible renewed contract with what Modernity would have dismissed as not able to be party to a contract, nature. A new social contract is something Serres has not yet developed.
“Pharmakons–Plato’s famous comment about the “pharmakon” that it could be both medicine and poison could apply to much of Serres’ philosophy.â€
For anyone interested in Plato’s use of pharmakon in the Phaedrus to describe writing, here is Derrida’s “2nd chapter” of Plato’s pharmacy. A just brilliant, incredibly thorough exegesis.
social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/pharma.htm
Dunamis