What is reality really? Are humans more special or important than the non-human objects we
perceive? How does this change the way we understand the world? We humans tend to believe that
things are only real in as much as we perceive them an idea reinforced by modern philosophy
which privileges us as special radically different in kind from all other objects. But as
Graham Harman one of the theory's leading exponents shows Object-Oriented Ontology rejects
the idea of human specialness: the world he states is clearly not the world as manifest to
humans. At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that objects - whether real fictional
natural artificial human or non-human - are mutually autonomous. In this brilliant new
introduction Graham Harman lays out the history ideas and impact of Object-Oriented Ontology
taking in everything from art and literature politics and natural science along the way.
Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc Los Angeles. A key figure in
the contemporary speculative realism movement in philosophy and for his development of the
field of object-oriented ontology he was named by Art Review magazine as one of the 100 most
influential figures in international art.
