In this article the author argues that we need not just to ‘decolonize’ the Anthropocene but also to ‘desecularize’ it – to be aware that in the new age of the Earth we may be coeval with gods and spirits. Drawing particularly on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Georges Bataille, and using concepts from both thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, the author starts to develop an interdisciplinary theory of planetary spirit and use this to speak of both the (...) ‘laminar’ high gods of time that are being invoked to summon the story of Earth’s ongoing transformation into a canonical mythos, and the turbulent lower spirits of place which manifest particular, situated dynamics on an Earth crossed by interlocking gradients and flows of energy, value, power and entropy. He suggests that what might once have been distinct territorialized ‘cultures’ or ‘natures’ in which humans engaged in particular situated patterns of interaction with animals, spirits and other beings are increasingly being convened into a global multinatural system. (shrink)

The introductory chapter, entitled 'The Subject, Method and Scope of this Enquiry,' details how anthropology is to be pursued as a science and advocates the method of participant observation.

Antropozofia dąży do przezwyciężenia ograniczeń poznawczych filozofii Kanta. Jerzy Prokopiuk wielokrotnie przyznawał się do fascynacji antropozofią Rudolfa Steinera. Polski gnostyk, kwestionując kantowski podział sądów, dostrzegł w nich agnostyczną bezsilność. Jego zdaniem, powodem słabości myśli Kanta było materialistyczne rozumienie doświadczenia, protestantyzm oraz życie osobiste filozofa.

In this article I argue that an adequate response to climate change requires an overcoming of the metaphysics of presence that is structuring our relationship with the weather. I trace the links between this metaphysics and the dominant way that the topic of climate change is being narrated, which is structured around the transition from diagnosis to cure, from the scientific reading to the technological writing of the weather. Against this narrative I develop a rather different account of the current (...) ecopolitical moment. I first argue that an understanding of anthropogenic climate change must be grounded in a biosemiotic analysis of the evolving metabolism between society and nature, one that is alert to the way that metabolism involves a folded relation between inside and outside, and that recognizes the constant deferral of biosemiotic meaning in ecological systems. I then use a deconstructive reading of climate technics to problematize the distinction between the diagnosis and solution of climate change, and expose modern scientific practices of reading the climate as already containing within themselves a notion of weather’s technological writability. Exploring the notion that previous transformations of the metabolic regime of society have always involved transformations of notions of the human, I conclude by sketching out a different way of reading and writing the weather, one that takes place in the ‘opening’ of climate change, that problematizes the idea of the human as the end of nature, and that thereby implies a more radical version of climate responsibility. (shrink)

In the Parthenon frieze, the time of mortals and the time of gods seem to merge. Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that with the advent of the Anthropocene the times of human history and of the Earth are similarly coming together. Are humans entering the ‘monumental time’ of the Earth, to stand alongside the Olympian gods of the other geological forces? This article first looks at the cultural shifts leading to the modern idea of separate human and Earth histories. It examines (...) the changing use of monuments to mediate between human and other temporalities. It explores the use of ‘stratigraphic sections’ as natural monuments to mark transitions between the major time units of Earth history, and the erection of intentional monuments nearby. It suggests that the Anthropocene, as a geological epoch-in-the-making, may challenge the whole system of monumental semiotics used to stabilize our way of thinking about deep time. (shrink)

This book brings together contributions from scholars across the humanities. A wide-ranging exploration of the interface between performance and nature. Examines the use and usefulness of ideas of ‘performance’ for understanding human-nature relationships. Draws on different disciplines and intellectual traditions and on different conceptions of ‘performance’ and ‘nature’. Contributions are rooted in real-world contexts and problems, explored through detailed ethnographic work. Explores domains as diverse as allotments and bioinvasion, fox hunting and green politics. Makes a distinctive contribution to the ‘cultural (...) turn’ in environmental research. (shrink)

The interest shown in marginal groups is explained by a diversity of factors. On the threshold of the modern era appeared an abundant literature devoted to a description of the world of delinquency. More particularly, these were treatises on the mysteries of the forbidden quarters of the cities of the time and on the behavior and way of life of social groups living by swindling or fraud. This being drawn to the exotic and the unusual in society, which was not (...) unrelated to an awakening of ethnological curiosity, was also seen in the flowering of a type of literature which could be called “picaresque.” It had already appeared in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, but it came into full bloom only in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish picaresque novel, because of its literary brilliance and its wide acceptance by the reading public, left in the shade a multitude of similar works coming from other European countries, from the English “rogue pamphlets” to the “rogue” literature of Germany and Holland to the tales of Polish and Czech vagabonds. These literary works are closely related to treatises which claimed to be based on eye-witness accounts or which claimed to report authentic events. In reality, they were all taken from fiction and demand comparison with documentary evidence. But the abundance of this type of literature and the success it enjoyed also indicate an early awareness by modern society of the growing importance of social groups living in contradiction to the norms, manners and customs in force at the time. (shrink)

The author analysed the notion of moral act from the standpoint of materialist philosophy after having distinguished moral norms and values from other social norms and values, ethics from metaethics, and after having described the connection between moral norms and values.

There are five basic types of ontology of law identified in relation with the singling out simpIe ontological objects in a strong or weak sense, dualist ontological objects, and complex ontalogical objects in a strong or weak sense. The conceptians of law far mulated in the theories/philosophies/ of law are ascribed to these five types.

The author singles out various conceptions of rationality used in practical legal discourse: formal and substantive rationality, instrumental goal‐ and means‐rationality, communicative rationality. Practical rationality is expressed in decisions justified by epistemic and axiological premises according to the rules of justificatory reasoning. Five levels of analysis of this justification are identified. Rules, principles and evaluations are used as justifying arguments and their characteristics determine the dimensions of rationality of decision depending on the features of rules, various conceptions of principles, and (...) kinds of relativisation of evaluations. The dimensions of legal rationality depend mainly on three singled out conceptions of rationality, i.e., formal rationality dealing with the deep structure of justification, instrumentally oriented rationality as content of justifiability, and communicative rationality linked with the pragmatics of human interaction. Legitimacy, according to the presented analysis, appears as a subclass of external justification dealing with axiological premisses in terms of instrumental rationality and/or communicative rationality. (shrink)