TECHNIC AND MAGIC

This innovative work presents an alternative reality-system to the dominate, Western approach of technology, through an exploration of the notion of magic in the role of reality-engineering, drawing on Islamic and Hindu philosophies.

We take for granted that only certain kind of things exist – electrons but not angels, passports but not nymphs. This is what we understand as 'reality'. But in fact, 'reality' varies with each era of the world, in turn shaping the field of what is possible to do, think and imagine. Our contemporary age has embraced a troubling and painful form of reality: Technic.

Under Technic, the foundations of reality begin to crumble, shrinking the field of the possible and freezing our lives in an anguished state of paralysis. Technic and Magic shows that the way out of the present deadlock lies much deeper than debates on politics or economics. By drawing from an array of Northern and Southern sources – spanning from Heidegger, Junger and Stirner's philosophies, through Pessoa's poetry, to Advaita Vedanta, Bhartrhari, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra's theosophies – Magic is presented as an alternative system of reality to Technic. While Technic attempts to capture the world through an 'absolute language', Magic centres its reconstruction of the world around the notion of the 'ineffable' that lies at the heart of existence.

Technic and Magic is an original philosophical work, and a timely cultural intervention. It disturbs our understanding of the structure of reality, while restoring it in a new form. This is possibly the most radical act: if we wish to change our world, first we have to change the idea of 'reality' that defines it.

Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher based in London (and Rights Manager for Verso Books). He is the author of The Last Night: anti-Work, Atheism, Adventure (2013) and What We Are Fighting For: a Radical Collective Manifesto (2012) and visiting lecturer at Royal College of Art, UK.• A Provocative intervention into contemporary psychopathology, intending to help people understand and cope with the pressures of modern life by changing their world view

• Innovatively structured, each section on technology in the first half is mirrored by an equivalent yet opposite one on magic in the second. The first part on Technic will use almost exclusively Western philosophical references, the second part on Magic will rest mainly on a triad of Iranian (Shi'a), Indian (specifically Vedanta) and Mediterranean (Hermetic) references

• Presents a number of concepts and philosophical methods derived from the rich Muslim tradition of philosophy to a contemporary Western readership; such an approach is increasingly popular, but still relatively rare

• The author communicates complex ideas with lucid, literary and elegant writing, introducing each section with imaginative examples, such as the Sicilian puppet show as representative of our conception of the staging of reality

• With a preface by major philosopher Timothy Morton