Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy

Graham Harman is Associate Provost for Research Administration and Professor of Philosophy at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He was born in Iowa City, Iowa in 1968, the first of three sons of hippie parents who met at a Rolling Stones concert in Chicago. He received his undergraduate degree from the classical liberal arts program at St. John's College, Annapolis (1990). His Master's Degree was done at Penn State (1991) under the renowned philosopher Alphonso Lingis, and focused on Levinas. He completed his Ph. D. at DePaul University in Chicago (1999), with a dissertation that became his first book. While finishing his doctoral studies, he worked as a Chicago sportswriter from 1996-98. In September 2000 he began work in the Department of Philosophy at the American University in Cairo. Egypt has become his base for travel to more than 60 countries and the composition of ten books in less than a decade. He is very fond of animals, and became a vegetarian for ethical reasons at the age of 7.

Intro -- Preliminary Note -- Part One: Lovecraft and Philosophy -- A Writer of Gaps and Horror -- The Problem with Paraphrase -- The Inherent Stupidity of All Content -- The Background of Being -- Not Unfaithful to the Spirit of the Thing -- The Phenomenological Gap -- A Lovecraftian Ontography -- On Ruination -- A Lonely and Curious Country -- Comic and Tragic Intentionality -- Style and Content -- Part Two: Lovecraft's Style at Work -- The Call of Cthulhu -- The Colour Out of Space -- The Dunwich Horror -- The Whisperer in Darkness -- At the Mountains of Madness -- The Shadow Over Innsmouth -- The Dreams in the Witch House -- The Shadow Out of Time -- Part Three: Weird Realism -- Gathering the Threads -- Fusion -- Fission -- The Taxonomic Fallacy -- Weird Content.