Simondon on Individuation: Preface to the Translation

The works of Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989) have not yet been translated into Hebrew. In fact, Simondon remains relatively little known outside the Francophone sphere. It was only recently, in 2020, that his major philosophical work was translated into English. This work is Simondon’s doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of the philosopher Jean Hyppolite. Its title, cumbersome both in the French original and in Hebrew translation is Individuation in Light of the Notions of Form and Information. The text translated into Hebrew and published in this issue is the introduction to that work. The conceptual density and argumentative breadth that characterize the introduction allow it to be read as a text that stands on its own.

Simondon’s philosophy of individuation challenges the traditional concept of identity, which, according to him, has constrained philosophical thought throughout its history and concealed an entire dimension of being. It is this hidden dimension – the preindividual, which is never self-identical insofar as it is always implicated in processes of individuation – that should concern contemporary philosophy: a philosophy that seeks to place relations before the related terms and to undermine the reign of identity without dissolving singularity. In this sense, Simondon offers both a philosophical program and a conceptual toolbox for its implementation. He is unmistakably a thinker of his time – or perhaps even one who anticipated it – yet the singularity of his thought makes him a unique figure within twentieth-century continental philosophy. Those interested in the history of philosophy, especially philosophies of process and difference, as well as in metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of science and technology, will all find much interest in his work. The same is true for those seeking new possibilities for grounding alternative ontologies that decenter the human without removing it entirely from the picture, thereby making room for the animal, the plant, the crystal, the photon, and, above all, for the creative, unexpected, and never-ending relations through which these beings come into existence – always in plurality, always together.