Being Up For Grabs: On Speculative Anarcheology

This is a book on the metaphysics of contingency. It looks at what could be otherwise, at what lacks the weight of necessity, at what is up for grabs. Aristotle maintained that there could be no knowledge of the impermanent. Since then, metaphysics has endeavored to find out what really is permanent, non-accidental and resilient – substances that endure, substrata underneath different qualities, fixed principles, necessary connections. In contrast, Bensusan draws on the growing philosophical attention to the contingent. It explores how we can counter Aristotle and develop a metaphysics of what ain’t necessarily so. The endeavor renegotiates the accepted familiarity between ontology and the search for an arché. Being Up For Grabs explores this in connection to what is up in the air, what is out of the blue and what is up for grabs. It is a metaphysical exercise that dialogues with several philosophical resources. It is also a speculative and anarcheological effort, as it tries to reach a broad and encompassing view of the sensible world while conceiving it as lacking any arché. The book emerges as an exercise in speculative anarcheology.