[Book Review] Maurizio Ferraris, Hysteresis : the external world

Abstract

It would not be an understatement to describe Maurizio Ferraris’ Hysteresis: The External World as a comprehensive system grounded in the constitutive metaphysical force of a generalised notion of recording. The book mainly consists of two interrelated yet separable divisions written twenty-one years apart, even if the style, argument, and characteristic humor remain consistent throughout. In light of this, Hysteresis can then be read in two distinct ways. If one were to mainly consider the first half – originally published in Italian in 2001 as Il Mondo Esterno – one would catch a glimpse of his early shift from hermeneutics to realism, a path Ferraris has been pursuing since at least 1999. Conversely, if one were to focus on the second part, the work could be comprehended as the culmination of more than twenty years of work on ‘new realism,’ which broadly names both Ferraris’ philosophical position and a movement originally founded by him and Markus Gabriel in 2011.