This article aims to add a further perspective to the discussion of the relationship between film and ethics. This perspective is important in today’s context, as the omnipresence of digital and mobile audiovisual images in everyday life increasingly determines our thinking and behaviour. However, there is a lack of appropriate critical reflection and ethical understanding of these images and their ontology. This article proposes a machine ethics of film from a film-philosophical perspective. Such an ethics draws on critical posthumanism, namely (...) on Karen Barad’s “ethics of mattering”, which explicitly relates to Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of the Other and their death. Thereby, special attention is given to the ontological nexus of film and death, as well as to the idea of film’s spectrality (drawing on, e.g., Derrida, Barthes, and Leutrat), a context that is discussed along with Barad’s diffractive view on quantum entanglement. Following from the author’s earlier approaches to Barad’s agential realism in the context of film-philosophy and certain Heidegger-based arguments set out in earlier writings about film and death, this article introduces the figure of what is called the “machinic spectre of film”. From here, the outline of a possible spectral ethics of film is considered by giving reasons for the exploration of further questions. (shrink)

The shortcomings of existing legal tools to abate species extinctions and habitat losses raise the attractiveness of recognizing rights of nature (RoN), in effect granting legal standing directly to non-human entities and collectives. RoN have been recognized in several domestic legislations and attract increasing popularity and enthusiasm. Yet, from an analytical and general perspective RoN rely on a contentious relation between concepts such as intrinsic value and interests, respectively, as justifying RoN. Consequently, a general analytical defense of RoN has not (...) been provided and recognition hitherto has been constrained to the contingent factors of domestic legislations. Here, I will provide an examination of RoN by way of expressive theories of law where law expresses (some) ethical values. Expressive theories of law have not previously been related to RoN. I will examine whether such theories have the potential of defending RoN as rights that legislatures have strong general reasons to recognize. The examination of RoN through the lens of expressivist legal theories provide a better understanding of RoN, and the analytical and conceptual commitments they presuppose, including the relation between ethics and law and the values underpinning RoN to be expressed by law. (shrink)

Management scholarship and practice continues to incorporate nature and business dependencies and impacts on ecosystems. The humanistic management approach seeks to shift management practice away from prioritizing economic outcomes and toward prioritizing human dignity and wellbeing. This paper explores humanistic management’s ontological assumption about nature, which tends to be an anthropocentric ontology that prioritizes humans as superior to and separate from nature and justifies destroying nature if doing so benefits human wellbeing. However, there is increasing pressure to conduct business (...) in ways that do not destroy nature but instead conserve or restore nature. I build on research about the diverse values and valuations of nature and identify awareness practices that humanistic management scholars and practitioners might use to become aware of and practice alternative ontologies about nature. Non-anthropocentric ontologies have the potential to lessen the tension between increasing human wellbeing and the destruction of nature and other-than-human beings. Alternative ontologies can be combined with the concept of stewardship to align humanistic management with broader sustainability goals, including notions of nature as sacred and of other-than-human beings as equal to humans in kinship and community. These ideas might provide a way for humanistic management to maintain its focus on human wellbeing while also acknowledging the dignity and wellbeing of other-than-human living beings and nature broadly. (shrink)

In the Western cultural imaginaries the monstrous is defined – following Aristotelian categorisations – by its excess, deficiency or displacement of organic matter. These characteristics come to the fore in the field of bioart: a current in contemporary art that involves the use of biological materials (various kinds of soma: cells, tissues, organisms), and scientific procedures, technologies, protocols, and tools. Bioartistic projects and objects not only challenge the conventional ideas of embodiment and bodily boundaries, but also explore the relation between (...) the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, human and nonhuman, as well as various thresholds of the living. -/- By looking at select bioartworks, this paper argues that the analysed projects offer a different ontology of life. More specifically, they expose life as uncontainable, that is, as a power of differentiation that traverses the divide between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, human and nonhuman, and, ultimately, life and death. In this way, they draw attention to excess, processuality and multiplicity at the very core of life itself. Thus understood, life always already surpasses preconceived material and conceptual limits. -/- Finally, while taking Deleuzian feminisms and new materialism as its theoretical ground, the paper suggests that such a revision of the ontology of life may mobilise future conceptualisations of ethics that evade the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

This paper aims at the construction of a structural coupling between object-oriented philosophy and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism by making a case for the primacy of the ontological principle through the proposal of a social object hypothesis. The social object here differs from traditional renderings of sociology, which are centered on humans’ activity and personalities, by way of recuperating Tarde’s social theory of associations. This theory provides us with a non-anthropocentric reading of sociality. This hypothesis will be furthered by (...) the introduction of the systemic category of internal/external, or system/environment, as a self-enclosure feature of social objects. Equipped with these two notions, we will discuss Graham Harman’s paper “Whitehead and Schools X, Y, and Z,” while rerouting his assessments to our own social object hypothesis. The final idea is to propose an alliance through the conception of a macro-ontological approach to philosophy of organism. We intend to show that this is not only coherently feasible regarding Whitehead’s own categoreal scheme, but also meets the requirements of being a real object in object-oriented ontology’s directives. (shrink)

This book examines the importance of flat ontologies for law and sociolegal theory. Associated with the emergence of new materialism in the humanities and social sciences, the elaboration of flat ontologies challenges the binarism that has maintained the separation of culture from nature, and the human from the nonhuman. Although most work in legal theory and sociolegal studies continues to adopt a non-flat, anthropocentric and immaterial take on law, the critique of this perspective is becoming more and (...) more influential. Engaging the increasing legal interest in flat ontologies, this book offers an account of the main theoretical perspectives, and their importance for law. Covering the work of the five major theorists in the area - Gabriel Tarde, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Karen Barad and Graham Harman - the book aims to encourage this interest, as well as to explicate the important problems of and differences between these perspectives. Flat ontologies, the book demonstrates, can offer a valuable new perspective for understanding and thinking about law. This book will appeal mainly to scholars and students in legal theory and sociolegal studies; as well as others with interests in the posthumanist turn in philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up Graham Harman’s critique of the philosophy of access as well as his proposed non-anthropocentric ontology, and I ask what it would be like for human beings to live or practice such a proposal. Drawing on Harman’s thinking about prehension, but shifting focus towards work in critical phenomenology and feminist science studies, I argue for the importance of human prehensive self-awareness within non-anthropocentric ontological practices, an awareness that emerges phenomenologically and in practice. Extending (...) both Donna Haraway’s theory of companion species and phenomenological practices of being-here with other things, I lay a groundwork for practicing being human as companion object. (shrink)

Technoscientific progress brings into question both anthropocentric epistemology and anthropocentric/humanistic ontology, which considers the human being as a self-constructing and self-sufficient entity. Even though, Darwinism recomposes the humanistic disjunction between reality and representation: by defining the human being as the result of an adaptive reflection, it reveals the idealistic character of post-Cartesian thought, which is the backbone of philosophical anthropocentrism. The non-human can be a dialogic entity if and only if it is considered not as “animal-by” but “animal-with”, (...) that is, free to express its authenticity in terms of subjectivity, diversity and uniqueness. Whilst the post-human laboratory celebrates the power of human beings, the post-humanistic perspective emphasizes the conjugation with the non-human. (shrink)

This paper presents a juxtaposition of the understanding of objects in Jean-Luc Nancy’s postdeconstructive realism and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, particularly with reference to their respective notions of touch. Nancy incorporates a tension between the phenomenological accounts of touch and embodiment given by Merleau-Ponty, who focuses on the relationality of the flesh, and Levinas, who focuses more on non-relational alterity. Furthermore, Nancy does not accept the anthropocentric assumptions whereby phenomenology accounts for objects insofar as they correlate to human existence. (...) Following the deconstruction of sovereign humanity, Nancy approaches what Derrida calls “post-deconstructive realism,” accounting for touch with regard to the relationality and alterity of all objects, human and nonhuman. However, abjuring the metaphysical interiority posited by panpsychists, Nancy admits that his philosophy cannot account for the discrete, atomistic differences between beings. Graham Harman agrees with much of Nancy’s philosophy, but he criticizes Nancy on this point, offering a corrective supplement in the form of his object-oriented ontology, which avoids panpsychism while nonetheless accounting for the discrete differences between objects. (shrink)

I argue that current projects in ‘naturalized metaphysics’ fail to be properly naturalistic, and thereby fail in their stated aim to take one’s metaphysics from science. I argue that naturalism must involve the idea of taking science seriously, and that this can only be spelled out in terms of taking not only the theories of science seriously, but also its practice and its socio-linguistic situatedness seriously as well. This accords with naturalism because not doing so draws an artificial (non-natural) distinction (...) between the epistemic products of science as essence, and its socio-linguistic and practical features as accidents. The picture of naturalism which falls out of this is a form of pragmatism. Once this is spelled out, the question becomes, what is the appropriate attitude for the pragmatist/naturalist to have toward ontology? It is not the same as that of traditional metaphysics, since such an attitude (that metaphysical theorizing can make positive epistemic contributions) requires a priori commitments which themselves are (1) not subject to empirical review, and (2) are anthropocentric and so potentially distorted. But the pragmatist/naturalist will not go the opposite way, and say that metaphysics is meaningless either, since (true to their pragmatic commitments) ontology does things for the scientist and the layperson. It is a mistake to reject it wholesale, since the task of asserting what there is, exposing such an ontology to criticism, both empirical and logical, and revising it, has both small-scale and large-scale consequences. On the small-scale, ontologies are a guide for thinking—scientists, engineers, and lay people can and do use models of existence to navigate occurent problems in their day-to-day lives. Whether this is posing research hypotheses, developing protocols for generating new materials, or cooling off a cup of coffee, ontology plays a role. Large-scale consequences are more weighty, and more difficult to see. These large-scale consequences have to do with the aims and values which individuals and societies possess, and their interrelation with ontology. This certainly was at the forefront of the earliest ontologies—the Epicureans and Stoics built their moral philosophy on the basis of what ontology they thought was correct. This sort of practice goes on, unabated, today, though with virtually no overt acknowledgement of this important interdependency. How, for the pragmatist, do we make sense of ontological talk, if we are to eschew traditional metaphysics? Ontology—the naturalist/pragmatist declares—is a tool. Ontology helps us do things, whether it be predict behavior, understand phenomena, blame or forgive someone, and hope or despair about a life after this one (for example). Building an ontology is about building our own concepts, and this, in turn is a negotiation between our beliefs, experiences, and commitments, and the beliefs, experiences, and commitments of with whom we’re discursively engaged. (shrink)

This research examines three thematic areas: philosophy, education, and ecology. It aims to be an interdisciplinary study, fundamentally based on the importance of the philosophy of environmental education and the practical implications that it can have. The problem of the contemporary hylomorphic production approach is first examined and then educational solutions are outlined towards a holistic understanding of the environment and of producing with it and not on it. By environment, in research, we also mean the human being because this (...) is only one of his many appendages; therefore, as such, we try to relocate him to a non-privileged place (a place where he has been autonomously placed for centuries). It aims to be a militant study towards a different anti-anthropocene educational approach that finds its paradigm in the “Green Schools” of Bali, as we will see in the conclusion. Keywords: Hylomorphism, ontology, environmental education, philosophy of education, ecosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, questions regarding the ontological status of the human have been raised with renewed interest and imagination within various fields of critical thought. In the face of biotechnological findings and increasingly advanced technologies that connect as well as disturb settled boundaries, whether geographical or bodily, not to mention philosophical questionings of traditional western humanism, the boundaries of the human subject have been contested. The human body, traditionally imagined as closed and autonomous, has been opened up to a world (...) of forces and agencies that are strange, other and often deeply disturbing when viewed from an anthropocentric standpoint. Rather than close down anxieties concerning such boundary transgressions and ontological uncertainties, scholars – not least within areas such as feminist, posthumanist and queer theory – have argued that here lie possibilities as well as an ethical urgency to rethink the human subject, its world(s) and its others. Indeed, what might it mean to view the world from positions that do not take the pure and autonomous human form as its starting point? And what ethical considerations does such a viewpoint demand of us? (shrink)

The protection of species ranks highly among environmentalist priorities, and many environmentalists expect the public to respect and support efforts to protect and rehabilitate endangered species. There are a range of instrumental and anthropocentric justifications for these attitudes, yet some environmentalists want more. It is unclear that more is to be had. In particular, it is challenging to justify some environmentalist attitudes without appealing to some version of the claim that species are intrinsically valuable. However, this has been a (...) notoriously difficult thesis to defend, and it is clearly not available to those who doubt the existence of species. In this paper, I show how a number of environmentalist commitments that appear to be about the value of species can be interpreted and defended in a way that is compatible with antirealism about species. According to my proposal, the proper target of environmentalists’ evaluative concern is the irreplaceable design that is embodied by the individuals that make up a (putative) species. This approach can capture and justify many environmentalist attitudes about the value of biological variety without attributing intrinsic value to species, or even requiring a place for species in our ontology. This enables environmentalists to effectively sidestep a number of puzzling issues surrounding the nature and value of species. (shrink)

The idea that humans are clearly distinguished from other animals and from the natural world in general is a cornerstone of European philosophy and culture at least from the sixteenth century onward. Often, this idea is related to understandings of ‘humanism’ that emerged in that period and legitimized regimes of power and control over non-European cultures; it also sanctioned the exploitation of the natural world in the form of extractive capitalism. Critiques of Eurocentric mindsets hinge on certain understandings of ‘humanism,’ (...) arguing for a transformation or even abandoning of humanist traditions in the sense of ‘posthumanism’ or ‘critical posthumanities.’ In their selective interpretation of European humanism—exemplified with Immanuel Kant’s philosophy—the current critique shows elements of an Occidentalist construction of humanism. If we want to overcome the idea that humans—and within that group particularly the white, male, educated Europeans—are the ‘masters of the world,’ we are confronted with conceptual challenges that need philosophical and theoretical reflection. The ontological and epistemological implications of non-anthropocentric ways of thinking and knowing provide a clear alternative to some problematic aspects of European philosophy and humanism. Engaging with new interpretations of other-than-human agency, relational understandings of animism, and intra-active production of knowledge can provide a relevant contribution to the ongoing discussion across intellectual, cultural, and political fields, an approach that takes the specificity of human animals seriously without identifying them as the center of knowledge and power. (shrink)

The problem we face today is that there is a huge gap between our ethical judgments about the ecological crisis on the one hand and our ethical behavior according to these judgments on the other. In this article, we ask to what extent a phenomenology of the ecological crisis enables us to bridge this gap and display more ethical or pro-environmental behavior. To answer this question, our point of departure is the affordance theory of the American psychologist and founding father (...) of ecological psychology, James Gibson. There are two reasons for taking this approach. First of all, an ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory provides a concept of nature which is non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric and eco-centric, but is not seen as an ‘intrinsic value’ or product of ‘human valuation’. Secondly, the affordance ontology provides us with a concept of nature which in itself calls for certain action and behavior. If we indeed face a gap between ethical judgment and ethical behavior with regard to the current ecological crisis, an affordance of nature could bridge this gap. Based on our ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory, we open a radically new perspective on the current ecological crisis and the responsibility of mankind with regard to this crisis. (shrink)

Chantal Akerman’s documentary Sud [South, 1999] investigates the brutal racist murder of James Byrd Jr that took place in Jasper, Texas in 1998. Sud is a socio-political documentary, but it...

In Heidegger's phenomenological ontology and his critique of the 'metaphysics of subjectivity,' the world is understood not as an 'object' at the disposal of a 'subject,' but as a phenomenal 'nearness' given revelation in language. Heidegger's ontology of language relies upon the work of Friedrich Holderlin, whose poetry Heidegger understands as giving 'voice' to Being in a peculiar proximity. For Heidegger, Holderlin's articulations are not those of a subject 'expressing' a meaning , but rather those of a poet whose 'remembrance' (...) recalls a sense of Being metaphysics has forgotten. Heidegger argues that Holderlin's language is of Being, beyond the self as defined by humanist notions of subjectivity which reduce Being, along with beings, to the subject's objectifying examination. In 'dialogue' with poetic language, Heidegger's philosophy aims to achieve a genuine thinking of Being, as well as Gelassenheit, the stance of receptivity. ;Holderlin's philosophical writings, however, challenge some of Heidegger's views both of poetic language and of the self or subject implied by language. Holderlin offers a critique of Kantian and Fichtean transcendental idealism and a theory of poetic language as promising a nontranscendental grasp of the 'ideal,' 'spirit' , or Being. Holderlin's examination of the 'poetic I' involves both skepticism and utopiainism, in which a self is understood to encounter the world outside the auspices of possessive, determinative, or objectifying relations. Thus I show that Holderlin suggests a model of 'poetic subjectivity' which conforms to dimensions of Heidegger's critique of the modern subject, yet which also does not leave behind the self and the human concerns of that self In Holderlin a non-anthropocentric humanism is imagined, one which furthers the Gelassenheit dimensions of Heideggerian philosophy while subverting the political determinations of his aesthetic ontology. The work of Julia Kristeva, in which poetic language reveals the 'subject in process' and which recognizes in Holderlin a poetic dimension of modern subjectivity, is employed to further examine these insights. (shrink)

The main question of the essay is: do ruins need a new definition? Ruins are not only destroyed architecture, but also everything that has been associated with it in the process of life. From the perspective of the question, the concept of ruins should be understood much broader than just architecturally, and they should be assigned not to the past but to the present, or rather between past and present. If we consider ruins from the standpoint which situates them between (...) culture and nature, there opens up another opportunity: here ruins are found on the juncture of nature and culture, becoming a natureculture hybrid. Here, degradation encompasses the cultural sense in the first place and the expectations it involves, but not from the perspective of nature. The order of nature translates into a new “life” of the ruin, which is attributed a new functionality, subordinated to other – non-anthropocentric – goals and values. Concluding, ruins require a new approach and a new definition that does not condemn them to degradation, but sees hope in the revitalizing forces of nature that ensure for them a new status and a different ontological significance. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism seeks a political ethics of world togetherness and a political aesthetics that can contribute to this task critically and imaginatively. Regarding political ethics, I explore the world as a “cosmopolitan mind” composed of “dialogic voices” and threatened by neoliberalism, neofascism, and other nihilistic “oracles.” I also construct a criterion for determining which public artworks (1) resist oracles and (2) help us imagine a “cosmopolitan democracy” and its political ethics. The latter includes the concordance of three ethico-political virtues—solidarity, heterogeneity, and (...) fecundity (creating new voices through the interplay among other voices)—and must appeal to different peoples worldwide. I also examine how this political ethics and aesthetics can be applied to nonhuman life and non-sentient formations in a non-anthropocentric manner; indeed, how the cosmos in its entirety and plurality can also be thought of as voices and participants in the cosmopolitan mind and its artistic expression. Moreover, I contend that my ontology of dialogic voices and proposed public art criterion, like the cosmopolitan mind itself, are “events” or “becomings.” This means that there can never be an articulation of the ontology that is final nor a public art criterion that could curtail the imaginative reach of art. (shrink)

In this article I examine how Deleuzian-inspired assemblage theory allows us to offer a new challenge to the enlightenment categories of thought that have dominated archaeological thinking. The history of archaeological thought, whilst superficially a series of paradigm shifts, can be retold as arguments constructed within distinctions between ideas and materials, present and past, and culture and nature. At the heart of all of these has been the critical issue of representation, of how the gap between people and the world (...) can be bridged. In the last decade or so, however, archaeologists have begun to make a more significant challenge to these ideas, and have attempted to offer a critique of our enlightenment heritage that is ontologically, rather than epistemologically, inspired. Drawing on the manner in which assemblages allow for the vibrancy of matter, are non-anthropocentric, multiscalar and more-than-representational, this article argues that Deleuzian thought offers the best chance to rework our understanding of the past in this manner. This is explored through a case study of three scales of analysis of Neolithic Britain. (shrink)

In the face of the current climate and environmental crisis, not only pragmatic solutions but also a theoretical shift is needed. A philosophical and ethical reflection is most necessary to guide our actions by promoting a renewed relationship between human and non-human nature, providing the theoretical and ethical foundations to initiate a new path of coexistence on this Planet. In this paper, I will make the case for the relevance of evolutionary biology knowledge to current challenges in environmental ethics. I (...) argue that by acknowledging biological evidence, philosophy can fruitfully reconsider the complex issue of the human-nature relationship from a non-anthropocentric perspective. Evolutionary biology approaches the human-nature relation problem from an ecological dimension and a deep-time perspective. Contra anthropocentric theories, scientific evidence shows (i) that there has never been any ontological separation between humans and the rest of the natural world, and (ii) that considering the profound evolutionary interdependence between these two spheres is essential to understand the ongoing climatic and environmental crises. In considering some specific cases – namely, the relational approach to ecosystems, the holobiont theory, and the niche construction theory – , I put into focus the fallacy of the anthropocentric vision that marks the current development model pursued by globalized Western societies, and contrast this with an approach of ‘humanistic ecocentrism’. I argue that this approach is consistent with scientific evidence, and that overcoming the present crisis will require a profound transformation in societal and individual values, which can only be achieved through a scientifically and ethically based ‘ecological education’. (shrink)

Here I argue that the hyper-individualistic and rationalistic ethical paradigms – originating in the late eighteenth century and dominating moral philosophy, in various permutations, ever since – cannot capture the moral concerns evoked by the prospect of global climate change. Those paradigms are undone by the temporal and spatial scales of climate change. To press my argument, I deploy two famous philosophical tropes – John Rawls's notion of the original position and Derek Parfit's paradox – and another that promises to (...) become famous: Dale Jamieson's six little ditties about Jack and Jill. I then go on to argue that the spatial and especially the temporal scales of global climate change demand a shift in moral philosophy from a hyper-individualistic ontology to a thoroughly holistic ontology. It also demands a shift from a reason-based to a sentiment-based moral psychology. Holism in environmental ethics is usually coupled with non-anthropocentrism in theories constructed to provide moral considerability for transorganismic entities – such as species, biotic communities, and ecosystems. The spatial and temporal scales of climate, however, render non-anthropocentric environmental ethics otiose, as I more fully explain. Thus the environmental ethic here proposed to meet the moral challenge of global climate change is holistic but anthropocentric. I start with Jamieson's six little ditties about Jack and Jill. (shrink)

The article examines the peculiarities of the approach of speculative realism to the analysis of the concepts of existence and object in the context of its criticism of Kantian and post-Kantian ontology, and especially the concept of correlationism, the dependence of the existence of objects on the perception of subjects, i.e. the postulation of the impossibility of the existence of the objective and the independent world from a man. The reasons for the emergence of speculative realism in contemporary French and (...) English philosophy and why these philosophies are called post-continental philosophies are clarified with the help of the historical-comparative method and the method of analysis. In opposition to correlationism, speculative realism seeks to “break through” to a “non-human world,” that is, to a world that is non-anthropocentric and non-human-dimensional. Such a world would be, in fact, “alien” to man, because it would be filled with objects unknown to man and independent of him. Here the obvious goal of speculative realism is to grant freedom to objects through the destruction of correlationism.In addition, the article shows that speculative realism, as a phenomenon in contemporary philosophy, is not homogeneous. Object-oriented ontology, speculative materialism, and materialist phenomenology can be distinguished in it. All these sub-ontologies of speculative realism demonstrate semantic shifts in the understanding of object and existence, but they recognize the existence of objective reality or the reality of objects, regardless of what they mean by the latter, which they try to ground it, in order to give it a fundamental meaning. Therefore, common for these sub-ontologies is the name “speculative” or “metaphysical” realism. (shrink)

Roberto Marchesini presents a timely proposal within post-human philosophy in order to overcome the centuries-long separation between human beings, non-human animals and technology. This book highlights the inspiring nature of the relationship with non-human beings - what Marchesini calls "Epiphany" - and how its enhancement can open new existential dimensions. Technology is also reinterpreted, no longer as a performative tool, but as a virus that infiltrates the human dimension and changes its predicates. Technopoietic events are not just the product of (...) human intelligence, but they arise from an epiphany (a becoming alterity), thus positioning technology well within the ontological and somatic dimension of human beings. This book lays the foundations for a new and non-anthropocentric Humanism, which is able to recognize the essential role that non-human alterities have had throughout our history. (shrink)

The problem we face today is that there is a huge gap between our ethical judgments about the ecological crisis on the one hand and our ethical behavior according to these judgments on the other. In this article, we ask to what extent a phenomenology of the ecological crisis enables us to bridge this gap and display more ethical or pro-environmental behavior. To answer this question, our point of departure is the affordance theory of the American psychologist and founding father (...) of ecological psychology, James Gibson. There are two reasons for taking this approach. First of all, an ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory provides a concept of nature which is non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric and eco-centric, but is not seen as an ‘intrinsic value’ or product of ‘human valuation’. Secondly, the affordance ontology provides us with a concept of nature which in itself calls for certain action and behavior. If we indeed face a gap between ethical judgment and ethical behavior with regard to the current ecological crisis, an affordance of nature could bridge this gap. Based on our ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory, we open a radically new perspective on the current ecological crisis and the responsibility of mankind with regard to this crisis. (shrink)

The contemporary ‘plant turn’, driven by modern scientific researches into plant potentialities and a renewed philosophical appreciation of botanical lives within Critical Plant Studies, has spurred discussions about the attribution of personhood to plants. However, anxieties subtend the notion of plant personhood, for it being predominantly anchored in an anthropocentric paradigm of autonomous and embodied ‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ properties of plant ontology. Drawing from Indigenous Naga animist vegetal ethos and building upon the arguments of Matthew Hall and Michael Marder, (...) the article attempts to transcend this impasse by conceptualising a neological framework of co-constitutive and reciprocal syntropic capacities as the defining elements of a non-anthropocentric vegetal personhood. Subsequently, the study employs this syntropic model of plant personhood to analyse the ethno-literary representations of vegetal agency and communication as syntropic plant capacities within the context of Indigenous Naga animist culture in two short stories from Temsula Ao’s anthology The Tombstone in My Garden (2022). On the whole, the article explores how the syntropic capacities of plants can function as a connective complement between the Western discourses of Critical Plant Studies and the Indigenous Naga animist arboreal worldviews to facilitate re-membering of an ecocentric plant personhood. (shrink)

Philosophies of Difference engages with the concept of difference in relation to a number of fundamental philosophical and political problems. Insisting on the inseparability of ontology, ethics and politics, the essays and interview in this volume offer original and timely approaches to thinking nature, sexuate difference, racism, and decoloniality. The collection draws on a range of sources, including Latin American Indigenous ontologies and philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Mills, and Eduardo (...) Viveiros de Castro. -/- The contributors think embodiment and life by bringing continental philosophy into generative dialogue with fields including plant studies, animal studies, decoloniality, feminist theory, philosophy of race, and law. Affirming the importance of interdisciplinarity, Philosophies of Difference contributes to a creative and critical intervention into established norms, limits, and categories. Invoking a conception of difference as both constitutive and generative, this collection offers new and important insights into how a rethinking of difference may ground new and more ethical modes of being and being-with. Philosophies of Difference unearths the constructive possibilities of difference for an ethics of relationality, and for elaborating non-anthropocentric sociality. -/- The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in Australian Feminist Law Journal. (shrink)

Big History expands the scope of historiography to study all the past, from the Big Bang to the present. Big History is decidedly non-anthropocentric, recognising that humans appeared only very recently from a much deeper past. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Big History brings together an international cast of leading and emerging scholars from a range of disciplines to provide the first comprehensive and balanced exploration of this new and increasingly significant field. -/- The handbook considers the ways in which (...) Big History broadens the scope of evidence historians use. It reveals how Big History allows for the use of information signals from the past, such as material remains, languages, ancient DNA, and fossils, using recently discovered techniques such as carbon-dating, the extraction of ancient DNA, and the analysis of background radiation from the origin of the universe. -/- Understanding Big History requires an examination of the ontology and epistemology of the past and its scientific inference and representation; chapters on the ontology of the past, historical information, historiographic experiments and predictions, the origin and the end of history, historical counterfactuals, contingency, necessity, and determination and under-determination of the past are included to facilitate this understanding. The handbook also provides a sustained analysis of the theoretical assumptions associated with synthetic historical science: the syntheses of genetics, linguistics, and archaeology to infer human prehistory, quantum physics and cosmology to infer the origin of the universe, and environmental science and biology to infer the history of life; as well as the distinct historical sciences and their methods: cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, archaeology, historical linguistics, and human historiography. -/- This ground-breaking volume is vital reading for all historians, philosophers and historical scientists interested in becoming more scientifically self-conscious when adopting philosophical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the past. (shrink)

The article seeks to highlight the relation between ontology and communication while considering the role of AI in society and environment. Bioinformationalism is the technical term that foregrounds this relationality. The study reveals instructive consequences for philosophy of technology in general and AI in particular. The first section introduces the bioinformational approach to AI, focusing on three critical features of the current AI debate: ontology of information, property-based vs. relational AI, and ontology vs. constitution of AI. When applied to the (...) themes of relationality and non-anthropocentric communications, bioinformational insights highlight an inclusive and meaningful groundwork for understanding AI by ‘relating’ it with society and the environment through an engagement with the ongoing critique of human supremacy. In the second section, we move from ‘relating’ AI to ‘rewilding’ AI by proposing taxonomical classification for certain technological entities. We situate our proposal in the broader personhood debate with the proposal of taxonomical ranking. In the last section, we show an instance of a relational approach steeped in substantialist ontology by introducing the fourth feature of the AI debate. A broad critique of Floridi’s philosophy of information introduces this fourth feature from the domain of philosophy and sociology to address various theoretical and ecological problems with current relational accounts. In doing so, we argue for ‘communication’ to be the replacement of ‘information’ as the moral unit. A bioinformational understanding of AI advocates taking ontological commitments seriously at all levels of informational and technological processes and products. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical examination of efforts to use Heidegger's thought to illuminate deep ecology. It argues that deep ecology does not entail a non-anthropocentric or ecocentric environmental ethic; rather, it is best understood as offering an ontological critique of the current environmental crisis, from a perspective of deep anthropocentrism.

How do we know when we are investing wisely in security? Answering this question requires investigating what things are worth securing (and why); what threatens them; how best to protect them; and how to think about it. Is it possible to protect them? How best go about protecting them? What trade-offs are involved in allocating resources to security problems? This book responds to these questions by stripping down our preconceptions and rebuilding an understanding of security from the ground up on (...) the basis of a common-sense ontology and an explicit theory of value. It argues for a clear distinction between objective and subjective security threats, a non-anthropocentric understanding of security, and a particular hierarchy of security referents, looking closely at four in particular-the ecosphere, the state, culture, and individual human beings. The analysis will be of interest not only to students and scholars of International Relations, but also to practitioners. David A. Welch is University Research Chair and Professor of Political Science at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. His previous books include Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which won the 1994 Edgar S. Furniss Award for an Outstanding Contribution to National Security Studies, and Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (2005), which was the inaugural winner of the International Studies Association International Security Studies Section Best Book Award. He is currently co-editor of the Cambridge University Press journal, International Theory. (shrink)

Postmodernism was not launched by the development of Warholesque pop art in the 1960s, nor was it initiated by the explosive destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe modern housing project of St Louis, Missouri in 1972, or by the commissioning of Jean-Francois Lyotard's work on knowledge in advanced societies by the Quebec government in the late 1970s. Postmodernism began with the publication of a paper entitled `The individualistic concept of plant the association' in 1926 by the plant ecologist Henry Gleason. If we (...) dare to characterize postmodernism, emphases on ideas such as heterogeneity, ephemerality, anti-foundationalism, pluralism, fragmentation, indeterminacy, schizophrenia, chaos, antiformalism, discontinuity, absence, playfulness, irony, localism, anarchy and ontological meaninglessness are the ones that tend to abound. The Gleasonian theory of plant associations can be said to reflect such ideas in the ecological arena. Certainly there is room for, and an expanding professional commitment to, a fully-fledged neo-Gleasonian postmodern approach to natural history in which ecological phenomena are examined using non-determinist, pluralist and local perspectives that reject the foundationalism and unifying approach of modernist science and which posits a view of the Earth's biota highlighting fragmentation, anarchism and non-interaction. Community ecology, as opposed to the unifying and totalizing tendencies of ecosystems ecology, might rightly claim to be the intellectual site of such a postmodern natural history. Often, postmodern studies not only attempt to describe a postmodern phenomenon but act to forge new varieties of postmodernism. It is in this vein that this paper seeks to present a non-anthropocentric form of postmodernism; not by dissolving the dualistic barrier that separates humanity from nature (as many environmentalisms would advocate) but by dissolving humanity and nature. (shrink)

This article considers film as a form of artificial intelligence (AI). This non-anthropocentric hypothesis was first formulated in 1946 by filmmaker and theorist Jean Epstein and regards film as the thinking performance of a technical apparatus, the cinematograph, which is a manifestation of machine thinking based on the holistic entanglement of thought and world, film and philosophy. The article pursues an enquiry into ‘thinking’: one of the most prominent and oldest topics considered in philosophy, and also essential to art (...) and film. Thinking is not only characterised as a sense (like sight or taste) but as a creative and, ultimately, intra-active act. The possibility of film as AI is approached not only from a Deleuzian angle, long appraised by film-philosophy, but also through questions recently raised by theories of artistic research and the speculative-materialist turn in contemporary philosophy. The latter have as a common denominator a strong critique of anthropocentrism in Western philosophy; the article enquires into this criticism from different angles and applies it to the main hypothesis of this analysis – to regard film as a form of AI. (shrink)

SummaryThere has been an anthropocentric tendency in the doctrines of creation and redemption, especially, within the Western tradition of Christianity. In my view, contemporary theories of evolutionary and developmental biology help theology to understand how God’s creation unfolds. Meanwhile, a Trinitarian framework of creation provides meaning and purpose to the victims in evolutionary history. Furthermore, it contributes to overcoming the anthropocentric tendency in understanding the doctrine of redemption through the lens of the cosmic dimensions of Jesus’ cross and (...) resurrection. Therefore, in this article, I argue that a Trinitarian framework of creatio ex nihilo can provide meaning and purpose to evolutionary history ridden by death, pain, and suffering, while evolutionary and developmental biology provides theology with a detailed explanation of biological evolution as God’s purposeful creation of the diversity of life in different levels of complexity. In the suggested Trinitarian vision of creatio ex nihilo, God creatively, compassionately, and redemptively works through biological evolution in general and particular modes. (shrink)

Although the use of the term “sentience” in philosophy dates to the 17th century, its use expanded particularly in the second half of the 20th century, with the emergence of non-anthropocentric ethics. A search for sentience in the animal kingdom began, which required the identification of a set of evidential sources. The difficulty in establishing, beyond any reasonable doubt, the existence of sentience in animals more distantly related to humans, and the consequences that the matter has for the legislation (...) on animal protection, led to the proposal to apply the precautionary principle in animal welfare policy. This principle establishes that the fulfilment of minimum criteria is enough for the existence of sentience to be admitted. This led to the attribution of sentience to invertebrates, namely molluscs, insects, and crustaceans. As a result, the possibility of including decapod crustaceans into animal legislation is currently discussed. In this article, we will perform the comparative exercise of applying a framework of minimum criteria of sentience, previously applied to crustaceans of the order Decapoda, to vascular plants. The framework is composed of eight independent criteria and the likelihood of plants meeting each of them will be assessed and discussed in the light of the existing empirical evidence. (shrink)

This book is a groundbreaking attempt to address questions of non-human and material agency from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines: archaeology, ...

The 2015 film Lost and Beautiful, directed by Pietro Marcello, en­deavors in aesthetically compelling ways to decenter the human in the frame and engage viewers in what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari term becoming animals. Part documentary film, part fairytale, this film tells the story in the nonhuman first person, of the life and journey of a water buffalo calf in the south of Italy and his relationship with the shepherd who saved him from pre­mature death, and later, with Pulcinella, (...) a mythological figure from Neapol­itan folklore, who accompanies him in a journey north. Adopting ecocritical and posthuman perspective and providing elements of environmental cultural history, this article analyses the aesthetic and narrative strategies the film em­ploys to grant subjectivity to a nonhuman protagonist and, in turn, address the viewers. Advocating for the conservation of human artifacts while also posing the question of animal rights and agency, Lost and Beautiful powerfully gestures toward a non-anthropocentric cinema. (shrink)

MacIntyre, Clark, and Heidegger would all agree that the current problem with moral theory is its lack of a satisfactory conception of human telos. This lack leads us to resort to such fictions as rights, interests, and utility, which are “disguises for the will to power.” Ibid., p. 240. These thinkers would also agree that modern nation-states are cut off from the roots of the Western tradition. Modern political economy, with “its individualism, its acquisitiveness and its elevation of the values (...) of the market to a central social place”Ibid., p. 237. is leading us into “the coming age of barbarism and darkness.”Ibid., p. 244. MacIntyre's grim depiction of the future, which Heidegger calls “the time of the darkening of the earth” and “the flight of the gods”,Heidegger, “What Are Poets For?” in Poetry, Language, Thought. can only be met by re-appropriating our own tradition. Although Aristotle has much to tell us, I believe Heidegger is right to turn to Heraclitus for a non-anthropocentric conception of humanity's place in Nature. Other writers, however, such as Arne Naess, George Sessions, and Stuart Hampshire, argue that the writings of Spinoza may offer the most helpful vision of humanity needed to guide our efforts to find a more appropriate basis for our behavior toward each other and toward the non-human world as well.George Sessions, “Spinoza and Jeffets on Man in Nature,” Inquiry 20 (1977):481–528. Sessions' essay was criticized by Genevieve Lloyd in “Spinoza's Environmental Ethics,” Inquiry 23 (1980):293–311. In reply, Arne Naess wrote “Environmental Ethics and Spinoza's Ethics: Comments on Genevieve Lloyd's Article,” Inquiry 23 (1980):313~ 325. Cf. also Stuart Hampshire, Two Theories of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Yet Aristotle, Qark, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Maclntyre, and Spinoza all agree that in order to behave fittingly, we must understand what it means to be human. At this time, I would like to acknowledge the importance of the following objection to what I have been arguing here: While it may be true that the concept of human rights is a fiction, it is nevertheless a very useful fiction for changing how human beings relate to each other. Tom Regan has frequently pointed out that even if the concept of rights proves to be ficticious, it can be helpful in protecting non-human beings from abuse by humans. Cf. his essay “Exploring the Idea of Animal Rights,” Animals' Rights - A Symposium (Sussex and London: Centaur Press Ltd., 1979); Regan, “Animal Rights, Human Wrongs,” Environmental Ethics 2 (1980):99–120. The doctrine of the rights of man justified the American and French revolutions, which brought forth new and important human freedoms. Today, most of humanity still lacks the protection afforded by constitutionally guaranteed human rights. Moreover, even in constitutional democracies there are frequent abuses of and attempts to curtail human rights. Until far more people become committed to protecting human rights, it is unlikely that there will be a big movement to extend rights to non-human beings, much less to overcome the anthropocentrism inherent in the concept of rights. What the Buddhist tradition calls “skillful means” is appropriate in our current situation.My thanks to Professor David Levin of Northwestern University for having reminded me of the importance of approaching the question of human rights in a “skillful” way. We must approach people in a way sensitive to their current self-understanding. Before we can pass on to the stage of planetary unity made possible by non-anthropocentric thinking, we need to find ways that promote mutual respect among human beings.On the topic of the relation between spiritual-psychological growth and the shift in human morality, cf. M.W. Fox, “Animal Rights and Nature Liberation,” in Animals' Rights - A Symposium. Out of such respect there can also arise respect for the non-human as well. While largely in agreement with this point of view, I would like to note that our means must be very skillful, indeed, if we are to transform our relationships to each other and to the natural world before irreparable damage is done to the earth, through nuclear war or environmental destruction. The time grows short for the transformation needed to bring us from the stage of anthropocentrism to a deeper awareness of our internal relationship to the whole world. Some people, such as Peter Russell, argue that we are witnessing the evolution of a non-anthropocentric mode of planetary consciousness that will be supported by the revolution in communications and computers. Peter Russel, The Global Brain: Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap tp Planetary Consciousness (New York: J.P. Tarcher, 1983). Other people, such as Jeremy Rifkin, maintain that the coming computer age promises ever greater intrusions into natural processes, such as the drive for control of genetic structures.Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (New York: Viking, 1983). In my view, while it is important to extend the idea of human rights wherever possible, it is also crucial that we consider seriously the possibility that the idea of human rights is merely a transitional way of conceiving of morality. As we learn more about the interrelationship of human life with all other aspects of the earth's life, our self-understanding will no longer be in harmony with the human-centered morality we know today. We will either learn to respect all beings and act toward them in appropriate ways, or else we will continue down the road we are now headed - a road which seems to have a very disturbing destination. Learning to dwell appropriately on earth is the most pressing moral issue of the day. (shrink)

In what follows I will provide an explication of what the principle of philosophical sufficiency (PPS) refers to as conceptualized by François Laruelle, whereas, at the moment, suffice it to say that it is comparable to Marx’s extolling of the principle of praxis over that of philosophy as a critique of the philosophical “self-mirroring,” a thesis that pervades Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General (Marx, Manuscripts), German Ideology (1968), Theses on Feuerbach (1969). The self-mirroring thought (philosophy is) subsumes the Real (...) itself reducing it to a postulate, to its transcendental aspect exclusively rather than reversing the hierarchy whereby thought submits to the Real albeit radically foreclosed for philosophy’s totalizing ambition. Instead of revisiting the dialectics between thought and the real, or reviving a Kantian dilemma, in his critique of Feuerbach’s materialism and the critique of Hegel’s philosophy under the aforementioned several titles, in particular in “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General,” Marx proposes that a shift toward “objectivism” would proffer a proper foundation for a truly scientific discussion of human reality. It is probably an undisputable fact that subjectivity-centered thinking and anthropocentric ontology, epistemology, and morality have determined the civilizational legacy of modernity: it begins with Kant’s practical philosophy and metaphysics of morals, if we must choose a single philosophical threshold in the Western history of ideas. Certainly, it coincides with the birth of republicanism as the model state promulgated by the French and the American Revolution and the completion of the enlightenment project. In Karl Marx’s politico-philosophical project, subjectivity, political state, and secularism are not what a modern society should consist in but quite the opposite their transcendence by way of sublation when confronted with a materialist, objective science of the species-being of humanity. Secularism is, argues Marx in The Jewish Question, a name for a “political” state that has alienated itself from the society precisely by way of relegating everything pertaining to the individual to the so-called “civil society.”. (shrink)

In the age of artificial intelligence, writing machines or robot authors have already begun to produce narrative texts in a variety of genres, including short stories and poetry, as well as journalistic articles. This article is based on the prospect that the narrative ecosystem is in a transitional period of decisive disconnection as it enters the era of artificial intelligence. The primary force driving this transition is the formidable execution of artificial intelligence algorithms, which fully automate narrative communication and narrative (...) works. This article attempts to lay the groundwork for building a new paradigm of post-narrativity through a critical examination of several detailed themes in narrative semiotics and non-anthropocentric narratology. The process of narrative creation based on artificial intelligence algorithms is a key condition that constitutes post-narrativity. This presupposes a non-anthropocentric view. In the landscape of post-narrativity, human writers, paper books, computer screens, and invisible narrative algorithms are all agents with equal influence. Automated narrative production by algorithms accelerates the repositioning of other existing media and actors, and changes the narrative ecosystem by incorporating new elements into activities such as production, distribution, and reception of narratives. (shrink)

Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart investigates the ways in which thinking through the contemporary hybrid artistico-scientific practices of bioart is a biophilosophical practice, one that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of life than we encounter in mainstream academic discourse. When examined from a Deleuzian feminist perspective and in dialogue with contemporary bioscience, bioartistic projects reveal the inadequacy of asking about life’s essence. They expose the enmeshment between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, and, ultimately, life and death. (...) Instead of examining the defining criteria of life, bioartistic practices explore and enact life as processual, differential, and always already uncontainable, thus transcending preconceived material and conceptual boundaries. In this way, this doctoral thesis concentrates on the ontology of life as it emerges through the selected bioartworks: “semi-living” sculptures created by The Tissue Culture and Art Project and the performance May the Horse Live in Me by L’Art Orienté Objet. The hope is that such an ontology can enable future conceptualisations of an ethico-politics that avoids the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Currently, there is no non-anthropocentric guide to the practice of nature conservation and the treatment of invasive species and domestic animals. In examining the so-called ‘ecocentric’ and ‘animal’ ethics, we highlight some differences between them, and argue that the basic aspiration for support of all nonhuman life needs to be retained. We maintain that hierarchies of value need to be flexible, establishing basic principles and then weighing up the options in the context of anthropocentrism, industrial development and human population (...) growth. Acknowledging the role of these conditions creates space for combining individual-based and collective-based ethics in practice. (shrink)

We begin by highlighting some points related to Kuhn’s later thoughts on the incommensurability thesis and then show to what extent the standard version of the thesis given by the structuralist metatheory allows us to capture Kuhn’s ideas. Our main aim is to establish what constitutes the basis of comparability between incommensurable theories, even in cases of incommensurability with respect to theoretical and non-theoretical terms. We propose that comparability between incommensurable theories requires some connection between their respective ontologies that (...) can be captured by means of an ontological non-reductive relation. At this point, the structuralist notion of “echeloned partial substructure” may be of help. When the incommensurability is very drastic, the existence of ontological connections between the theories involved may only be evident by common terms of their non-characteristic vocabularies. So, this notion of non-characteristic vocabulary becomes relevant in our proposal. (shrink)

In Primate Visions, the American philosopher of culture Donna Haraway, states that ‘primatology is a genre of feminist theory’. The reason she gives is that the politics of being female are intimately linked with the way we view animals and nature. Haraway’s main strategy aimed at opening up discourses and categories in order to produce a new kind of fiction and a new type of myth. In the coyote myth, Haraway develops an exemplary protean trickster figure that is consequential since (...) it might just offer the tools for survival in and improvement of the techno scientific world. Her coyote embodiments enable us to think bodies as active, ingenious, and generative agents, for whom metamorphosis and transfiguration are modes of becoming, and which have the potential to outwit the human intellect. If humans want to interact and get along with the world as coyote, they need to learn to interpret its signs correctly and to optimize anticipation of its contriving, scheming moves which are often curious, ironical, or unexpected. Humans can only successfully do this by making sustained efforts to understand the plotting world sufficiently from its perspective. This makes it possible to establish partial connections and alliances with it and keep the human anthropomorphizing tendencies at bay. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an exposition and critique of the Organic View of Ethical Status, as outlined by Torrance (2008). A key presupposition of this view is that only moral patients can be moral agents. It is claimed that because artificial agents lack sentience, they cannot be proper subjects of moral concern (i.e. moral patients). This account of moral standing in principle excludes machines from participating in our moral universe. I will argue that the Organic View operationalises anthropocentric (...) intuitions regarding sentience ascription, and by extension how we identify moral patients. The main difference between the argument I provide here and traditional arguments surrounding moral attributability is that I do not necessarily defend the view that internal states ground our ascriptions of moral patiency. This is in contrast to views such as those defended by Singer (1975, 2011) and Torrance (2008), where concepts such as sentience play starring roles. I will raise both conceptual and epistemic issues with regards to this sense of sentience. While this does not preclude the usage of sentience outright, it suggests that we should be more careful in our usage of internal mental states to ground our moral ascriptions. Following from this I suggest other avenues for further exploration into machine moral patiency which may not have the same shortcomings as the Organic View. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change poses some difficult ethical quandaries for non-anthropocentrists. While it is hard to deny that climate change is a substantial moral ill, many types of non-human organisms stand to benefit from climate change. Modelling studies provide evidence that net primary productivity (NPP) could be substantially boosted, both regionally and globally, as a result of warming from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. The same holds for deployment of certain types of climate engineering, or large-scale, technological modifications of the global (...) environment in order to prevent or slow anthropogenic climate change. For example, solar radiation management with stratospheric aerosol injections could benefit plant life by promoting enhanced photosynthesis, increasing diffuse radiation, and reducing heat stress. This has a surprising implication: from some non-anthropocentric perspectives, certain scenarios of climate change and climate engineering might bring about morally better states of affairs when compared to emission-mitigation baselines. (shrink)

This paper examines Sartre's dualistic ontology in the light of the non-duality asserted by Mahayana Buddhism. In the first section, I show, against the objection of Hazel E. Barnes, that Sartre and Buddhism have comparable theories of consciousness. The second section discusses Steven W. Laycock's use of Zen philosophy to solve the Sartrean metaphysical problem regarding the origin of being for-itself. This solution involves rejecting the ontological priority of being in-itself in favor of the Buddhist understanding of interdependent origination (pratitya-samutpada) (...) and emptiness (sunyata). Finally, I explain how this aspect of Buddhist thought is consistent with Sartre's ontology, thus making an acceptable solution. This consistency is possible if we understand Sartre's ontology as provisionally true in a sense gleaned from the Madhyamika and Yogacara schools of Indian Buddhism, which were influential to the formation of Zen philosophy. (shrink)