Theory of the Solitary Sailor by Gilles Grelet

Sailing the ocean in silence and solitude as a gnostic device. An act and program of refusal in 20 “points” and a “coda.” Navigating the waters as “lived anti-philosophy,” a theory and praxis of staying away with no plans of return. Very French, in some ways. This little book seems designed to be carried anywhere.

Over a decade ago, Gilles Grelet left the city to live permanently on the sea, in silence and solitude, with no plans to return to land, rarely leaving his boat Théorème. An act of radical refusal, a process of undoing one by one the ties that attach humans to the world, for Grelet this departure was also inseparable from an ongoing campaign of anti-philosophy. Like François Laruelle's "ordinary man" or Rousseau's "solitary walker," Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical figure, herald angel of an existential rebellion against the world and against philosophy's world-thought, point zero of an anti-philosophy as rigorous gnosis, and apprentice in the herethics of navigation.

2022; paperback; 5 x 7 inches; 128 pages; 9781913029968