Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2nd edition, with a new Preface) by Timothy Morton: New Open Access Book
Monday, October 20, 2025 at 1:03PM Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2nd edition, with a new Preface) by Timothy Morton.
Like all Open Humanities Press books, Realist Magic is available open access (= it can be downloaded for free):
https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/realist-magic-2nd-ed/
Book description
Object-oriented ontology offers a startlingly fresh way to think about causality that takes into account developments in physics since 1900. Causality, argues Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), is aesthetic. In this book, Timothy Morton explores what it means to say that a thing has come into being, that it is persisting, and that it has ended. Drawing from examples in physics, biology, ecology, art, literature and music, Morton demonstrates the counterintuitive yet elegant explanatory power of OOO for thinking causality.
With a new Preface by Timothy Morton.
Author Bio
Morton is the author of the libretto Time, Time, Time (opera by Jennifer Walshe, 2019), and of numerous artworks including We Are the Asteroid (with Justin Guariglia, 2019); Come Fast from the Dark (with Andrew Melchior, 2024); and This Huge Sunlit Abyss From The Future Right There Next To You (with Björk, 2015). In 2018 Morton co-wrote and appeared with Jeff Bridges in Living in the Future’s Past, directed by Susan Kucera. Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English at Rice University.
Morton has written Hell: in Search of a Christian Ecology (Columbia, 2024); All Art Is Ecological (Penguin, 2021); Spacecraft (Bloomsbury, 2021); Being Ecological (Penguin, 2018); Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017); Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, 2016); Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (Chicago, 2015); Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013); Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities Press, 2013); The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010); Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007); 8 other books and 300+ essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.
Series
The book is published as part of the New Metaphysics series: https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/series/new-metaphysics/
Series Design
The New Metaphysics series design is by Katherine Gillieson with cover illustrations by Tammy Lu.