MIT Press, Sachbücher, The Number and the Siren (Englisch, Quentin Meillassoux, 2012)

A philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, and eternity through a concentrated study of Mallarmé 's poem “ Un Coup de Dé s.” A meticulous literary study, a detective story à la Edgar Allan Poe, a treasure-hunt worthy of an adventure novel— such is the register in which can be deciphered the hidden secrets of a poem like no other. Quentin Meillassoux, author of After Finitude, continues his philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, infinity, and eternity through a concentrated study of Mallarmé 's poem “ Un Coup de Dé s,” patiently deciphering its enigmatic meaning on the basis of a dazzlingly simple and lucid insight with regard to Mallarmé 's “ unique Number.” The decisive point of the investigation proposed by Meillassoux comes with a discovery, unsettling and yet as simple as a child's game. The Number that “ can be no other” can only be revealed to us via a secret code, hidden in the “ Coup de dé s” like a key that finally unlocks every one of its poetic devices. Thus is also unveiled the meaning of that siren, emerging for a lightning-flash amongst the debris of the shipwreck: as the living heart of a drama that is still unfolding.With this bold new interpretation of Mallarmé 's work, Meillassoux offers brilliant insights into modernity, poetics, secularism, and religion, and opens a new chapter in his philosophy of radical contingency.The volume contains the entire text of the “ Coup de dé s” and three other poems, with new English translations.