The Philosophy of Movement: An Introduction
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
The Philosophy of Movement: An Introduction
By (Author) Thomas Nail
Foreword by Daniel W. Smith
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
2nd January 2025
United States
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Human geography
116
Physical Properties
Hardback
312
Width 140mm, Height 216mm, Spine 25mm
454g
Description
An influential thinker distills years of work on the philosophy of movement into one accessible account
Why are city dwellers worldwide walking on average ten percent faster than they were a decade ago Why are newcomer immigrant groups so often maligned when migration has always constituted civilization To analyze and understand the depth of the reasons, Thomas Nail suggests that it serves us well to turn to a philosophy of movement. Synthesizing and extending many years of his influential work, The Philosophy of Movement is a comprehensive argument for how motion is the primary force in human and natural history.
Nail critiques the bias toward stasis at the core of Western thought, asking: what would a philosophy that began with the primacy of movement look like Interrogating the consequences of movement throughout history and in daily life in the twenty-first century, he draws connections and traces patterns between scales of reality, periods of history, and fields of knowledge. In our age of rapid movements shaped by accelerating climate change and ensuing mass global migration, as well as ubiquitous digital media, Nail provides a contemporary philosophy that helps us understand how we got here and how to grapple with these interlocking challenges.
With a foreword by philosopher Daniel W. Smith, The Philosophy of Movement: An Introduction is a must-read for scholars and students not only of philosophy but also history, anthropology, science and technology studies, mobility studies, and other fields across the humanities and social sciences.
Author Bio
Thomas Nail is distinguished scholar and professor of philosophy at the University of Denver. He is author of many books, including Matter and Motion: A Brief History of Kinetic Materialism; Lucretius III: A History of Motion; Theory of the Object; and Being and Motion.
Daniel W. Smith is professor of philosophy at Purdue University. He has translated, from the French, books by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Klossowski, Isabelle Stengers, and Michel Serres.
