In the 20th century, phenomenology promised a method that would get philosophy 'back to the things themselves'. But phenomenology has always been haunted by the spectre of an anthropocentric antirealism. Tom Sparrow shows how, in the 21st century, speculative realism aims to do what phenomenology could not: provide a philosophical method that disengages the human-centred approach to metaphysics in order to chronicle the complex realm of nonhuman reality. Through a focused reading of the methodological statements and metaphysical commitments of key phenomenologists and speculative realists, Sparrow shows how speculative realism is replacing phenomenology as the beacon of realism in contemporary Continental philosophy. He draws on phenomenologists including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, speculative realism's original creators Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier and Iain Hamilton Grant and key figures in speculative realism's second wave, including Ian Bogost and Timothy Morton.

Tom Sparrow argues that phenomenology’s method results in idealism; descriptive analysis entails constitutive analysis. He then reviews the metaphysical realism variously argued in eight thinkers of the speculative realism movement. This valuable book not only offers readers a clear account of this important contemporary debate, but critically advances the arguments. -- Alphonso Lingis, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University

Tom Sparrow is a Visiting Instructor in the Department of Philosophy at Slippery Rock University, PA. He is the author of Plastic Bodies: Rebuilding Sensation After Phenomenology (with a foreword by Catherine Malabou), forthcoming with Open Humanities Press.