Monday, July 11, 2005
(11:19 AM) | Anonymous:
The need for ecosophy and not a new ecological vision.
The 'Ecology in the City' think-tank has been trying to rap up our meetings in order to flesh out some way of moving forward. For my own part I have been trying to conceive of some way in which philosophy can help in creating a way of thinking ecologically that does not have to say, "Oh yeah, and we should find some way of preserving nature in urban settings too." Thankfully there is a line of thought running through much of the work in philosophy of religion that is helpful in thinking this. Spinoza to Hegel to Levinas; all have serious ramifications for any philosophy of ecology. (In my own opinion the work of Philip Goodchild goes the furthest in developing this relationship, though I am currently reading a book by William R. Jordan that does much in the way of developing this relationship from a more 'field' perspective.) I would characterize this work as being 'ontological' in basis, that is it attempts to create a way of being nature that is more connected than our normal humanistic politics. There has been some other work done from a more orthodox phenomenological mode that should be considered, since this work engages with the topic in a narrowly focused manner (I think this ultimately hurts the project).Robert Frodeman’s Geo-Logic is one such work and posits a threefold-thesis – 1) That understanding out relationship to the Earth as the ground which sustains humanity is one of our most basic challenges and because of this challenge the earth sciences need to ground themselves in the humanities (as the branch of knowledge concerned with culture) as they do with nature; 2) That the political debate concerning an environmentally sustainable future is determined by science informing democratic debate, but that this debate is also cut off from the humanities and thus the debate hinges upon uncritically examined values; 3) The humanities are ill-prepared for the role of creating public values because they have become too specialized and thus the humanities must reconcile their contemplative lives with their physical lives, or philosophers need to take a walk in the woods.
Ultimately, Frodeman takes the ersatz-Heideggerian position embodied by Richard Rorty that what needs to be done is story telling. We need to translate scientific facts into stories that promote empathy for nature and our position with it. This, Frodeman thinks, will help to chip away at our Libertarian mode of politics that thinks of nature and humanity as separate. While I agree with the goal of this project, and find his view of science refreshing coming from a Continentally-influenced philosopher, I don't think this orthodox phenomenology is sufficiently radical enough.
To begin with, the whole thing is predicated on a 'vision'. Stories are told so that we can 'see' in our 'minds eye' something in a different way. While this may be good in some way, it is not going to alter our relationship with nature anymore than a documentary about Bush lying is going to get him removed from office. It has its purpose, but it is not going to bring about the change needed in the end. Secondly, this way of 'visioning' a new ecological policy tends to think of the environment as something still 'Other' and outside, that is as Wilderness. The works of figures concerned with questions of philosophy of religion tend to conceive nature as something to be 'communed' with, to find a relationship of equality. This leads to the third shortcoming of Frodeman's work, at the heart of his hope is a hope in the policy makers to change our relationship with the environment. Politics is not something done in Washington, but is decided in our spatial and temporal relations to people and non-human entities we come into contact with every day. It is, to be somewhat irreverent, more of a liturgy than it is a law.
Surprisingly this kind of ecosophy is what we find in Deleuze & Guattari, as well as in theologians like Milbank. This may explain why I keep coming back to both as they are mediated through people like Goodchild.
