Can experience be thought systematically without transforming the richness of the world as it is lived into reductive philosophical generalities? Can the method of empiricism ever be reconciled with a method of systematic cosmological speculation? Didier Debaise’s reading of Process and Reality shows clearly what a philosophy that makes this possible looks like, how it works and what is at stake. He focuses in on Whitehead’s attempt to construct a metaphysical system of everything in the universe that exists whilst simultaneously claiming that it can account for every element of our experience: everything enjoyed and perceived, willed or thought. In this way, Debaise illustrates how Whitehead’s philosophy gives us a radically new way of conceiving the relations between experience and speculation.

'In Speculative Empiricism, Didier Debaise expertly guides the reader on a remarkable voyage through Whitehead's metaphysical masterpiece, Process and Reality. The juxtaposition of the two title words sets the agenda, giving notice from the start that we will be heading into unexpected territory. Here, speculation will become a matter of experience, and experience, reciprocally, will be imbued with the futurity of potential. The result is a novel pragmatics of becoming which Debaise maps with unerring lucidity and precision, providing both an introduction to key Whiteheadian concepts and a major contribution to the scholarship that will be of equal interest to specialists.' - Brian Massumi, University of Montreal

Didier Debaise is Director of the Centre for Research in Philosophy at the Free University of Brussels.