The Universal (In the realm of the sensible): Beyond Continental Philosophy proposes a radical, new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Dorothea Olkowski develops the concept of an ontological unconscious, a connection arising from our sensible relation to the world that conditions encounters with the environment and with others. This fundamental ontology rethinks the space-time relations opened by IrigarayOCOs notion of the OCyinterval, OCO BergsonOCOs OCyrecollection, OCO Merleau-PontyOCOs idea of the OCyfleshOCO and DeleuzeOCOs OCyplane of immanenceOCO. Writing in an original style, inspired by literature and the arts, Olkowski locates a OCyrealm of the sensesOCO, a field of vulnerability, felt as pleasures and pains. This presents an aesthetic sense of something universal to all human kind, as well as to the organic and inorganic world. In addition to this proposal for a wider ontology, the relation between traditional ontologies and politics is examined as a means of opening politics beyond a no exit or limit cycle. Instead a multiplicity of self-organized, emergent perspectives emerges, eliminating the need for the connections, conjunctions, and disjunctions of the Kantian paradigm at work in contemporary continental philosophy. This is a timely, controversial and important book that will contribute enormously to the study of Deleuze and Continental Philosophy."