François Laruelle's lifelong project of "nonphilosophy," or "nonstandard philosophy," thinks past the theoretical limits of Western philosophy to realize new relations between religion, science, politics, and art. In Christo-Fiction Laruelle targets the rigid, self-sustaining arguments of metaphysics, rooted in Judaic and Greek thought, and the radical potential of Christ, whose "crossing" disrupts their circular discourse. Laruelle's Christ is not the authoritative figure conjured by academic theology, the Apostles, or the Catholic Church. He is the embodiment of generic man, founder of a science of humans, and the herald of a gnostic messianism that calls forth an immanent faith. Explicitly inserting quantum science into religion, Laruelle recasts the temporality of the cross, the entombment, and the resurrection, arguing that it is God who is sacrificed on the cross so equals in faith may be born. Positioning itself against orthodox religion and naive atheism alike, Christo-Fiction is a daring, heretical experiment that ties religion to the human experience and the lived world.

The latest development concerning the metaphorical use of the fairy tale is the legal perspective. The law had and has recourse to fairy tales in order to speak of the nomos and its subversion, of the politically correct and of the various means that have been used to enforce the law. Fairy tales are a fundamental tool to examine legal procedures and structures in their many failings and errors. Therefore, we have privileged the term "fables" of the law just to stress the ethical perspective: they are moral parables that often speak of justice miscarried and justice sought. Law and jurists are creators of "fables" on the view that law is born out of the facts (ex facto ius oritur) so that there is a need for narrative coherence both on the level of the case and the level of legislation (or turned the other way around: what does it mean if no such coherence is found?). This is especially of interest given the influx of all kinds of new technologies that are "fabulous" in themselves and hard to incorporate in traditional doctrinal schemes and thus in the construction of a new reality.

Living in global villages where different world-views and cultures daily traverse each other, and the hegemonic power of the West is being challenged by other powerful role-players, numerous political and ethical challenges emerge. This traversing of narratives is interpreted and developed into a trans-fictional praxis, as a praxis that takes this global experience seriously. The book also acknowledges the role of Christianity in the construction of global villages and therefore seeks a Christ-poiēsis as a way for non-colonial spaces to emerge from the shadows of these villages.

The Poverty of Philosophy: Readings in Non and Other Philosophies and Arts of Imminence kicks off with an 8,000 word overture, “Poverty of Philosophy” introducing non-philosophy and its progenitor, François Laruelle, his inspirations by, rapports and connections with other ‘philosophers of immanence’ (Nietzsche, Henry, Deleuze, Derrida...) as well as exploring, and also drawing some conclusions as to the possibilities of its present, and/or feasible impact on culture, politics and the arts, there follows the Anthology of NON, and other Philosophies and Arts of Immanence, comprised of some 300 excerpts from some 140 published sources, many signed by Laruelle, and many of the others by French, Anglophone, as well as Eastern European writers, artists, philosophers, scholars, critics and thinkers who extend his insights in the various domains of human endeavor. Very often translated from the French, and frequently commented, these excerpts are arranged alphabetically under 88 topics, from Actor to World, the complete list of them following my introduction, in a table of contents keyed to page #’s for each of them. Following are close readings in Beitchman’s five review essays, two of works of Laruelle, and of three by scholars here very much in his wake: “The Machinery of Control (Sophie Lesueur, “Pensée machine et ordre politique”)”; “Universe, World, Philo-Fiction and Non-Action in Non-philosophy (François Laruelle, Tétralogos:)”; “Ecology, Sacred and Profane (François Laruelle, En dernière humanité: la nouvelle science écologique)”; “The Philo-Fictions of Katerina Kolozova (Cut of the Real and 5 other works)”; “A Leap through Language: Non-Philosophy, Science and the Arts (Sergueï Khoruzhiy, “La non-philosophie de François Laruelle entre le Charybde de la transraison et le Scylla du scientisme”).” These essays provide a synoptic overview of non-philosophy from its inception to its latest non-standard philosophy avatar. Generally Beitchman’s focus is on language and vocabulary, and their associated arts, principally literary and performing—and on the way terms like World, Universe, Superposition and Philo-fiction are deployed, defined, re-defined or refused definition; also how modern science, once fractals, now more Quantum and Wave theory, in concert with these imponderables, expands the horizon of the thinkable, conceivable and above all the feasible.

How are we to conceive of acts that suddenly expose the injustice of the prevailing order? These acts challenge long-standing hidden or silently tolerated injustices, but as they are unsupported by existing ethical rules they pose a drastic challenge to dominant norms. In Excessive Subjectivity, Dominik Finkelde rereads the tradition of German idealism and finds in it the potential for transformative acts that are capable of revolutionizing the social order. Finkelde's discussion of the meaning and structure of the ethical act meticulously engages thinkers typically treated as opposed—Kant, Hegel, and Lacan—to develop the concept of excessive subjectivity, which is characterized by nonconformist acts that reshape the contours of ethical life. For Kant, the subject is defined by the ethical acts she performs. Hegel interprets Kant's categorical imperative as the ability of an individual's conscience to exceed the existing state of affairs. Lacan emphasizes the transgressive force of unconscious desire on the ethical agent. Through these thinkers Finkelde develops a radical ethics for contemporary times. Integrating perspectives from both analytical and continental philosophy, Excessive Subjectivity is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the ethical subject.

The book is a reading of numerous contemporary continental philosophers (Badiou, Deleuze and Guattari, Laruelle and Derrida amongst others) and bringing them into conversation with each other around various ethical and political challenges of living in capitalist worlds. What can contemporary continental philosophy offer with regards to the questions of decolonial thinking, the challenges of identity politics, the formation of political identities in response to the dominant norms in the context of the struggles of victims of these norms? Johann-Albrecht Meylahn is professor in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

This special issue of Labyrinth is the second part of a diptych dedicated to the eminent French philosopher François Laruelle in honor of his 80th Anniversary. The included essays deal with the Origins of Laruelle's Non-Philosophy in Ravaisson's Understanding of Metaphysics, the question of Religious Pluralism, the non-philosophical mystique and the rehabilitation of heresis, the analogies and differences of Laruelle's non philosophy to Iamblichus or Martin Heidegger. The contributors to this issue are Vincent Le, John M. Allison, Eleni Lorandou, Stanimir Panayotov, Ameen Mettawa, David Bremner, and Yvanka B. Raynova.

Selfishness is essential to capitalism—or so both advocates and opponents claim. In Infinite Greed, Adrian Johnston argues that this consensus is mistaken. Through a novel synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, he reveals how the relentless pursuit of profits is not fundamentally animated by human acquisitiveness. Instead, capitalism’s strange “infinite greed” demands that individuals sacrifice their pleasures, their well-being, and even themselves to serve inhuman capital. Johnston traces the mechanisms that compel capitalist subjects to obey the cold imperative to accumulate in perpetuity and without limits—and also without regard for the consequences for everyone and everything else. Facing crises such as spiraling wealth inequality and the profit-driven prospect of a looming ecological apocalypse, the rational self-interest of the majority would seem to dictate putting a stop to capitalist accumulation. By bringing together the Marxian critique of political economy with psychoanalytic metapsychology, Johnston shows why and how capitalism, rather than being responsive to people’s rationally selfish interests, disregards and overrides them instead. Unlike previous syntheses of Marxism and psychoanalysis, Infinite Greed pairs Freudian and Lacanian concepts with the economic heart of Marx’s historical materialism. In so doing, Johnston brings to light the complex intertwining of political and libidinal economies keeping us invested and complicit in perpetuating capitalism and its ills.

This volume – which has come about through a collaborative venture between Dragos Gheorghiu (archaeologist and professional visual artist) and Theodor Barth (anthropologist) – aims at expanding the field of archaeological research with an anthropological understanding of practices that include artistic methods.

Michael Onfray passionately defends the potential of hedonism to resolve the dislocations and disconnections of our melancholy age. In a sweeping survey of history's engagement with and rejection of the body, he exposes the sterile conventions that prevent us from realizing a more immediate, ethical, and embodied life. He then lays the groundwork for both a radical and constructive politics of the body that adds to debates over morality, equality, sexual relations, and social engagement, demonstrating how philosophy, and not just modern scientism, can contribute to a humanistic ethics. Onfray attacks Platonic idealism and its manifestation in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic belief. He warns of the lure of attachment to the purportedly eternal, immutable truths of idealism, which detracts from the immediacy of the world and our bodily existence. Insisting that philosophy is a practice that operates in a real, material space, Onfray enlists Epicurus and Democritus to undermine idealist and theological metaphysics; Nietzsche, Bentham, and Mill to dismantle idealist ethics; and Palante and Bourdieu to collapse crypto-fascist neoliberalism. In their place, he constructs a positive, hedonistic ethics that enlarges on the work of the New Atheists to promote a joyful approach to our lives in this, our only, world.