"The philosophical act begins by removing; rather than adding knowledge to knowledge, it begins with 'without.'"

In recounting the history of philosophy, Mazarine Pingeot begins my laying out two major trends: humans in search of the absolute, from Protagoras to transhumanism, and humans focused on interconnectedness in the here and now. From Antiquity to Descartes (tom whom she devoted her dissertation), by way of Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, Pingeot helps us understand the history of human thought through a new lens of desire and lack. 
Happy abstinence, degrowth, or else the infinite advance of science and technology, the vertigo of unchecked consumption: these are the contradictory faces of today's world on which this very personal history of philosophy seeks to shed light.