Two Lessons on Animal and Man

This slim volume contains material from two lessons that French philosopher Gilbert Simondon prepared for psychology courses he was teaching in 1967. They interrogate what Jean-Yves Chateau identifies, in his introduction to the text, the problem of life as posed by psychology's twin concern for intelligence and instinct. These concepts are integral to psychology, but also to millennia old debates about humans and animals, morality and autonomy. Simondon traces their intellectual history. The first lesson focuses on ancient Greek philosophers and how they associated certain activities with intelligence or instinct, while the second focuses on theologians and early modern philosophers. Distributed in North America by the University of Minnesota Press. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Simondon is a secret password among certain discussions within philosophy today. As a philosopher of technology, Simondon’s work has a place at the forefront of current thinking in media, technology, psychology, and philosophy with complex accounts of man’s relationship to technology and the realm that continues to form itself via this tension between man and his technical universe. In this introduction to Simondon’s oeuvre, the reader has access to the grounding of one of the most fundamental and critical questions that has been the focus of philosophy for millennia: the relationship between man and animal.