One of Europe's leading realist philosophers restores the role of the external world to modern philosophy Written by one of the launching members of the New Realism movement Made up of two parts: part one written at the end of the 20th century, part two written in 2021, providing an outstanding summary of Ferraris's increasingly influential philosophy Critically engages with the idealist legacy of Kant and Derrida With a new Introduction showing how the original themes were developed in Ferraris' later work and how he connects to other trends in philosophy and culture Since the 1780s, Western philosophy has been largely under the spell of Immanuel Kant's transcendental philosophy. In this book, Maurizio Ferraris offers a number of important criticisms of Kant in a book of two parts, written 21 years apart. The first part of the book, 'Observation', originally published in 2001, lays the foundations of Ferraris' New Realism, foreshadowing the realist turn that has become characteristic of 21st century philosophy. The second part, 'Speculation', written in 2021, outlines a complete metaphysical theory of realism. What ties both parts of the book together is the the notion of hysteresis, the ability of effects to survive even when their causes have ceased to exist. This notion is used in many fields, ranging from physics to sociology. The term 'hysteresis' allows Ferraris to unite under a single term both recording in the proper sense (something remains) and iteration (something repeats itself); both alteration (in repeating itself, something undergoes a change) and interruption (sooner or later everything will end in total stasis, the thermal death of the universe, which will mark the final victory of recording over everything and everyone). These are the key elements of the book, through which we can understand new realism and its comprehension of the world.