Phenomenon & Difference. Essay on the Ontology of Ravaisson

After a pandemic-related delay, we are releasing the first-time English translation of François Laruelle’s very first book, Phenomenon & Difference, by Lindsay Lerman. This publication brings to focus the evolution of the philosopher’s thoughts for English speakers, especially given the attention his work has been receiving due to its relevance to the discussions of immanence in continental philosophy. The interest of young Laruelle in Felix Ravaisson as the inspiration for his longstanding focus on immanence offers historical and yet original connexions between philosophy, abstraction, and art.

“Laruelle’s philosophically complex and artistically multilayered doctoral thesis, first published in 1971, is finally available to the English-speaking audience by Triple Ampersand (&&&), the publishing arm of The New Centre for Research & Practice in this rich and beautifully nuanced translation by Lindsy Lerman. Phenomenon and Difference is a text in which Laruelle passionately engages with the notion of “difference” as if a path of radicalization of “immanent thought” only to find himself on the other side, facing the One as the “black universe.”

–Katerina Kolozova, author of Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle and Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital, Philosophy, and Patriarchy.