Minka Woermann 
Bridging Complexity and Post-Structuralism 
Insights and Implications

This work addresses the topic of philosophical complexity, which shares certain assumptions with scientific complexity, cybernetics, and General Systems Theory, but which is also developing as a subject field in its own right.






Specifically, the post-structural reading of philosophical complexity that was pioneered by Paul Cilliers is further developed in this study. To this end, the ideas of a number of contemporary French post-structural theorists and their predecessors – including Derrida, Nancy, Bataille, Levinas, Foucault, Saussure, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hegel – are introduced. The implications that their various insights hold for our understanding of complex human systems are teased out at the hand of the themes of economy, (social) ontology, subjectivity, epistemology, and ethics. The analyses are also illuminated at the hand of the problematic of the foreigner and the related challenges of showing hospitality to foreigners.






The study presents a sophisticated account of both philosophical complexity and philosophies of difference. By relating these subject fields, the study also extends our understanding of philosophical complexity, and offers an original characterisation of the aforementioned philosophers as complex thinkers.

Table of Content

A philosophical approach to complexity.- Complexity and her roots.- Scientific v. philosophical complexity.- Principles of philosophical complexity.- Philosophical complexity and the status of ontology, epistemology, and ethics.- Philosophical complexity and the question of ethics.- The ethics of complexity and the complexity of ethics.- The nature of meaning.- The restricted economy v. the general economy.- Philosophical complexity and poststructuralism.- The status of the good.- The collapse of the fact-value distinction.- Immanent philosophy: hermeneutics v. deconstruction.- The problem of moral justification.- Engaging with complexity: beyond logic?.- Ethical complexity and the importance of praxis.- modelling ethics and the possibility of a beyond.- Nietzsche and Foucault: the restricted economy and the hope for the impossible.- Derrida: codification and complexity.- Nancy: complexity and concealed thinking.- Implications for philosophical complexity.- Complex agency and responsible action.- Who comes after the subject?.- Re-placing the subject.- Challenging identity and responsibility.- Identity and responsibility redefined: the view from complexity.- Chapter 6: Philosophical complexity: an extended overview.