Gilbert Simondon

French philosopher of technology and individuation

University of Poitiers; Sorbonne, Paris · France · d. 2 October 1924 (Saint-Étienne) — 7 February 1989 (Palaiseau)

A French philosopher who rethought both being and technology through individuation: things are never finished substances but ongoing processes of taking form. Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (1958) defended machines as a culture in their own right, misunderstood by a humanism that fears them. His notions of transduction and the transindividual, long neglected, now feed debates on media, cybernetics and the work of Gilles Deleuze.

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Record

Life: 2 October 1924 (Saint-Étienne) — 7 February 1989 (Palaiseau)
Country: France
Period: 20th-century Continental
Affiliation: University of Poitiers; Sorbonne, Paris
Areas: Philosophy of technology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of science
Major works: Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (1958)
L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information (thesis 1958, published 1964 and 2005)
L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (1964)
Cours sur la perception (1964-1965, published 2006)
L'individuation psychique et collective (1989)
Imagination et invention (1965-1966, published 2008)
Deux leçons sur l'animal et l'homme (published 2004)
Key concepts: Individuation, Transduction, The transindividual, Pre-individual being, The genesis of technical objects, Metastability
Influenced by: Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Norbert Wiener (cybernetics), Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, the Pre-Socratics
Sources: Wikipedia, Gilbert Simondon
Monoskop, Gilbert Simondon

Stories

This Day in Philosophy

Gandhi, Simondon and the question of how to live, on 2 October

Mahatma Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 and Gilbert Simondon on 2 October 1924: one made non-violence a political method, the other rethought what a machine is. The same day gives the birth of Swami Abhedananda and of Wallace Stevens, and the death of Marcel Duchamp.

Mahatma Gandhi, Gilbert Simondon

Newsroom2 October 2026