Individuation : Ontogenes : Prolegomena till Gilbert Simondons genetiska ontologi

The following text constitutes an attempt to present the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon's genetic ontology through an account of his reconfiguration of the problem of individuation in his doctoral thesis from 1958, L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel, métastabilité. The intention is to show how Simondon through this reconfiguration of a classical philosophical problem – in which concepts and schemas from contemporary physics and technology is utilised in a critique of the bi-polar hylomorphic schema as its traditional, substantialistic solution – becomes able to articulate an anti-substantialistic and anti-reductionistic ontogenesis as first philosophy. A systematic philosophical conception that according to Simondon precedes every critical investigation of the subject as well as every scientific ontology – not by establishing a pre-critical position, but by exceeding Kant's critical position: that is, through a displacement toward a conception of the transcendental conditions for the genesis of being and thought as real conditions, rather than conditions of mere possibility. A displacement that in turn appears to respond to the question that frames this basic account of important concepts and schemas in Simondon, namely: in what sense and to what extent is it necessary for philosophical thought to be thought and developed in relation to other forms of thought