Instructor: Christopher Latiolais,

Course Goals:

The earliest courses in “environmental ethics” examined how western philosophy’s ethical theories might help us understand our responsibilities for the environment, whether “custodial,” based upon sentiment (empiricism) or rights (rationalism), communal among species, caring, maternal, etc. Traditional ethical theories such as virtue ethics (Aristotle), utilitarianism (Hume), natural law theory, deontology (Kant), care-ethics (Gilligan), Gaia hypothesis, feminism (Griffin, Daily), animal rights theories, etc. were put on display and assessed, negatively in the end as comprehensive doctrines, leaving both professor and student in limbo regarding the appropriate orientation to, and understanding of, the contemporary ecological crisis. Ecofeminism and deep ecology emerged as successor orientations, framing the ecological crisis more comprehensively as the neglect of, respectively, women or nature, the first owing to the patriarchal parasitism, the second owing to the anthropocentric instrumentalization of nature. Courses in “Ecological Philosophy” emerged that framed the issue more widely, in an interdisciplinary fashion, more multiculturally, in providing surveys of different cultural conceptions of nature, and more historically, in a critique of western rationality. Eco-phenemonology responds to these traditional schools of environmental thinking by decrying the implicit conception of nature underlying them: namely, either empiricist, rationalist, or constructivist accounts of nature, all of which presuppose a largely modern scientific account of nature. Our modern scientific account of nature as a functionally defined (cybernetic) physical system is “correct” for the purposes of controlled study, experimentation, and manipulation, but it neglects a more radical inquiry into how humans are situated as natural beings in the world.

The central concern that arises from traditional environmental ethics and ecological philosophy is, first, a critique of the objectivistic and scientistic conception of nature as a correlate (naturalism) or construct (idealism) of human theoretical understanding and perception and, second, an appreciation of, and search for, alternative conceptions of nature. Philosophy of nature emerges, then, as the central concern, taking shape as a genealogical inquiry into how our scientific framing (Gestell) of nature arose within the western tradition. Such a genealogy plumbs our dualistic inheritance of the Greco-Hellenic rationalist cosmology, along one an intellectualist tributary, and our Judeo-Christian monotheistic theology, along a voluntarist tributary. Of course, in assuming this exploratory posture, we run the risk of looking to the past and to other traditions in either a nostalgic longing in time or narcissistic sentimentality in geography seeking, then, an alternative conception of nature that escapes the vortex of our scientific study and industrial exploitation of nature. The twin dangers of nostalgic historiography and narcissistic social geography become palpable here, turning the past and the other into exotic compensatory destinations for our present landlocked predicament. Attempting to reverse our asymmetrical, dominating, calculating, exploitative, appropriation of natural resources, western eyes turns toward non-western concepts of nature as in harmony with, and reciprocity to, human life. In particular, pagan accounts of nature as all encompassing, all providing, and all answering a sort of womb of all life were inventoried as a curative for our post-industrial ecological disaster, establishing a museum curation of displayed tonic alternatives, none true to their original, none undistorted by our greedy gaze, all assembled to lead us away from our western self-conception as rational agents. Appropriately studied, however, past and other conceptions of nature can remind us, first, of the high price we paid to conceive and command nature as mere resource for human consumption and, second, of our primordial belonging to a diversely populated world.

The history of environmental ethics and ecological philosophy is a history of evermore radical inquiries into the history of western civilization and its emerging self-conception as a rational tradition. The critique of western reason as instrumental rationality conducted by the first generation of critical social theorists (hereafter CST) conducted under the title of the “Dialectic of the Enlightenment,” provides a comprehensive and far reaching genealogical inquiry into the roots and sources of science, technology, culture, self-governance, etc. The first generation conducted, however, a total critique of reason that, despite its illuminating empirical description of actual social pathologies of reason, is no longer tenable as a comprehensive philosophical conception of western reason as such. As Neo-Marxist social philosophers in the 1930s and ‘40s, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Benjamin took stock not only of the failed proletariat revolution during World War One, but also the emerging totalitarian societies in the the USSR, Germany, and Italy, all precariously pitched toward World War II. By the 1950s, after, the world’s total mobilization for war, the resulting carnage of 25-million people, the revelation of the Nazi death camps, the dropping of atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the solidification of U.S consumer society, these thinkers were convinced that western civilization had finally metastasized into a self-destructive madness, all under the pious platitudes of progress, reason, and justice. The deficits of this genealogical deconstruction of western reason have been well documented, but this line of historical thinking focused upon the devastations of two world wars, genocide, and rapacious empirialism reveals something has gone terribly wrong in the western world. As an empirical account of the 20th-Century, these genealogical critiques still carry considerable weight in exposing how reason and rationality have actually turned out in the west.

Ecologically minded thinkers drew upon this “Dialectic of Enlightenment” as a genealogical deconstruction of western rationality, science, technology, and culture. Western reason revealed itself as controlling, aggressive, possessive, egotistical, calculating, obsessive, and dominating a self-spiraling, ever-tightening, ever-accelerating functional system bent on dominating all that is, turning nature into “natural resources” (Bestand) for efficient human usage, humans who are themselves subordinate to, and dominated by, the principle of efficiency. Ecologists appropriated this genealogical deconstruction of western reason to highlight, not only the disenchantment of nature, but also the total mobilization of nature under the imperative of efficient control and exploitation. Deep, feminist, and social ecological movements ascent this dialectic as, respectively, deracinating (dominate nature), patriarchal (dominate women), or narcissistic (dominate others), but the core of the critique remains the same: namely, the loss and forgetfulness of nature, in ourselves, in others, and in the world. Writing in the 1950s–1970s, the anthropologist Loren Eisley writes the following:

It is with the coming of man that a vast hole seems to open in nature, a vast black whirlpool spinning faster and faster, consuming flesh, stones, soil, minerals, sucking down the lightning, wrenching power from the atom, until the ancient sounds of nature are drowned in the cacophony of something which is no longer nature, something instead which is loose and knocking at the world’s heart, something demonic and no longer planned—escaped, it may be—spewed out of nature, contending in a final giant’s game against its master.

The Firmament of Time, pp123-124

Eisley brilliantly captures, in a single beautifully constructed sentence, the gist of critique of instrumental reason: western reason has become monstrous and destructive, rendering nature wholly transparent, pliable, and manipulable by ultimately anonymous systems imperatives build into the economy and state.

The philosopher who most powerfully analyzed western rationality as an ever-accelerating, anonymous, quasi-autonomous system of domination/dominating humans and non-humans alike, is Martin Heidegger in his middle period. Heidegger analyzes technology, not anthropologically as a tool wielded by humans, but, instead and in sharp contrast, existentially as a pervasive “mode of disclosing being as such” both human and non-human beings. According to Heidegger’s historiography of interpretations of beings, i.e. ways in which beings are handled, understood, and interpreted modernity is defined by a pervasive and comprehensive “framing” of things as mere means of systematic appropriation and exploitation, so all that is figures only as phases, moments, stages of anonymous systems of control and domination. Heidegger’s unique way of understanding human life as a participation in a mode of world disclosure allows him to show that humans do not wield technology as a tool but, instead, are subordinate to, and dominated by, the historical event of technological world-disclosure. Humans are not sovereigns of, but subjects to, a mode of world-disclosure. Heidegger provides a fascinating analysis of how things (Dinge) in ancient times become entities (res) in the medieval ages, objects (Gegenstände) in the modern era, and, eventually, mere resources (Bestände) in our technological age. His basic idea is that anonymous social systems, e.g. the economy and state–define all that is as “standing reserve,” condemning all other ways of being present to oblivion (Vergessenheit). After reading “The Question Concerning Technology,” in which Heidegger diagnoses technological world-disclosure, we read his succinct prognostic essay, “The Thing,” which invites us to remember these alternative ways of allowing beings to present themselves to us. In “The Thing,” Heidegger invites to appreciate that any human world, which offers an interpretation of being, takes place in tension with the earth, understood as that which withdraws, recedes, and secrets itself from world interpretation. “Earth” become Heidegger’s concept of an essential polarity of human understanding, which is rooted or grounded in ways that escape explicit understanding and reasoning. In a still later essay, Heidegger claims that certain beings, which he calls artworks, stand in as markers for our way of disclosing the world, so that handling and responding to such beings allows us to better appreciate the larger, more encompassing place within which humans live out their lives. It’s this invitation to back away from compulsive technological disclosure that provides us with a way of breaking free from the obsessive rhythms of technological control. We will watch Godfrey Reggio’s, Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (American, 1982, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke) and Powaqqatsi: Life in Transition (American, 1998, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke) as cinematographic meditations upon technology as a mode of revealing.

We will then explore this concern with western reason from another angle: namely, from Merleau-Ponty’s investigations into human embodiment. Merleau-Ponty is unique in western philosophy because of his unrelenting, sustained, and far-reaching insistence that the body is the subject of perception. Staunchly rejecting the mind/body dualism endemic to the western tradition, from Platonist rationalism and Judeo-Christian monotheism to Cartesian dualism and its aftermath in reductive materialism, Merleau-Ponty develops an alternative account of human intelligence as fundamentally and inextricably embodied: bodily capabilities and skills, not conscious mental contents, is the locus of human “subjectivity.” The core of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of the various opposing traditions of western philosophy, e.g. empiricisms, rationalism (“intellectualism”), realism, idealism, etc. is their common assumption of a prejudice: i.e. “the prejudice of the objective world.” The assumption of a ready-made, determinate, fixed, and given world underlies, not only naturalistic realism, but also idealist or “intellectualist” constructivism. Realism presupposes that the human mind mirrors an already fixed and determinate given world, while constructivism presupposes that the object is a pure construction according to intellectual rules or categories. Merleau-Ponty accepts that humans actively make sense of the world, i.e. they understand and interpret both self and world, but he refuses to view this active, sense-making activity of the subject as an intellectual operation. Instead, he conceives of human perception as a matter of practical embodied capacities, skills, abilities, and practices. In this way, Merleau-Ponty preserves Kant’s famous “Copernican Turn” in philosophy, i.e. the turn to an active, form-giving subject, but he construes this activity as practical, embodied, and implicit, not, then, theoretical, abstract, and intellectual. Merleau-Ponty follows out and creatively transforms Husserl’s phenomenological investigation of a transcendental sense-giving subject, following Heidegger’s demand to de-transcendentalize this subject: i.e. to place the subject for whom there is a world in the very world in which he participates. So, Merleau-Ponty embraces the paradox of subject as both in the world and yet also that being for whom there is a world as such. Merleau-Ponty’s unique type of phenomenology works out this paradox of subjectivity, first in terms of the body as self-orienting perspective upon the world and subsequently, in his later period, in terms of the “flesh” as the confluence between subject and world. While locating the self-orienting subject in the world, Merleau-Ponty adamantly rejects a scientific naturalization of the subject as an objectified physical system. Like Heidegger, that being to whom beings show themselves cannot be understood in terms of (theoretical) categories but, instead, in terms of structures of existence.

Merleau-Ponty’s central contribution to ecological thought is his staunch rejection mind/body dualism and subsequent rejection of a culture/nature division. Human life is a distinctive configuration of nature, both a passive impression of nature (Heidegger’s earth) and an active expression of nature (Heidegger’s world). He calls this distinctive configuration of being “flesh,” which invites us to appreciate how the natural order is self-configuring, a self-expressive way of being, with human expression being another moment of this larger envelope of self-disclosive being. Trained up on multiple dualisms, we will struggle to grasp Merleau-Ponty’s account of the unitary phenomenon of self-disclosive or “self-expressive” nature, but it is, I suggest, an abiding if original dimension of everyday human life. The human body is intimately intertwined with the tools it handles and the places it inhabit, making person and place, habit body and habitat polarities of a unitary phenomenon of being open to the world. This body/world chiasm, i.e. this way in which the body is articulated by the environment and the environment is articulated by the body, this intertwining of person and place invites us to remember the fuller coordinates or human involvement in the world. Moreover, appreciating this reciprocal calibration of body and environment allows us to attend to neglected, elided, and forgotten dimensions of embodied engagement with the world within which we become responsive to resonance of non-human nature.

In the final section of the course, we turn to Martin Seel’s aesthetic theory: i.e. his aesthetic of appearing, which is deeply responsive to the fullness of the world’s appearing, a fullness that dwarfs our characteristically routinized and compulsive teleological instrumental negotiations of spaces and times. For Seel, aesthetic openness to the world’s multifarious modes of appearing, revealing, or showing itself allows us to recreatively reorient our lives to the fuller compositions, configurations, and composure of things, places, self, and others.

Texts:

Zimmerman, Michael et.al. Environmental Philosophy. 4nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

Essays Posted On Moodle:

1. Martin Seel:
   • The Aesthetics of Appearing. Trans. John Farrell. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2005.
     • “A Rough History of Aesthetics,”
     • “Aesthetics as a Part of Philosophy,
     • “The Aesthetics of Appearing: The Appearing”
   • “Aesthetic Arguments in the Ethics of Nature,” Martin Seel and Catherine Rigby, Thesis Eleven 1992 32: 76.
   • Precis of the Introduction, Eine Aesthetik der Natur (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996.
2. Martin Heidegger:
   • Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969.
     • “The Question Concerning Technology,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. Willian Lovitt (New York, NY: Haper Colophon Books, 1977).
     • “The Age of the World Picture,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. Willian Lovitt (New York, NY: Haper Colophon Books, 1977).
   • “The Thing” from: Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language,Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: HarperCollins, 1971.
   • “Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics” from: Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge: MIT, 1991.
3. On Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
   • Evans, Fred. & Leonard Lawler, eds. Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Flesh. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2000.
     • Introduction: The Value of Flesh: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy and the Modernims/Postmodernism Debate
   • Brown, Charles S. & Toadvine, Ted, eds. Eco-phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2003.
     • “Eco-phenomenology: An Introduction”
     • “Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty: Some of their Contributions and Limitations for Environmentalism.”
     • “The Primacy of Desire and its Ecological Consequence,” Ted Toadvine
   • Toadvine, Ted. Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2009.
     • “Introduction“
     • “Radical Reflection and the Resistance of Things”
     • “The Human-Nature Chiasm”
     • “Conclusion”
4. Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum: 1999.
   • “The Concept of Enlightenment,” Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor
   • “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment and Mass Deception,” Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor.
5. Horkheimer, Max. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Continuum, 1947.
   • “The Rise and Decline of the Individual”
   • “Means and Ends”
6. Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man.
   • “The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness: Repressive De-sublimation”

Movies:

• Qatsi (life) film trilogy: (American, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke).
  • Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (American, 1982, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke).
  • Powaqqatsi: Life in Transition (American, 1998, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke).
• Natural Born Killers (American, 1994, directed by Oliver Stone, original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that was heavily revised by Stone).
• The Five Senses (Canadian, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, 1999).

Reading Schedule:

Introduction: The History of Environmental Ethics and Environmental Philosophy:

Week 1:

• Tuesday:
  • Introductory Remarks
  • Division of teamwork for Environmental Philosophy.
• Thursday:
  • Part One: Environmental Ethics, Introduction by Baird Callicot
  • Part Two: Ecofeminism and Social Justice, Introduction by Karen Warren

Week 2:

• Tuesday:
  • Part Three: Environmental Continental Philosophy, Introduction by Irene Klaver
  • Part Four: Political Ecology, Introduction by John Clarke
• Thursday: Student Presentations on Individual Articles:
  • 2:10 – 2:35: Environmental Ethics
  • 2:35 – 3:00: Ecofeminism and Social Justice
  • 3:10 – 3:35: Environmental Continental Philosophy
  • 3:35 – 4:00: Political Ecology

The Dialectic of Enlightenment: The Critique of Instrumental Reason and the End of the Individual:

Week 3:

• Tuesday:
  • “The Concept of Enlightenment,” Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment.
  • “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment and Mass Deception,” Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment.
• Wednesday Evening Movies: Natural Born Killers (American, 1994, directed by Oliver Stone, original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that was heavily revised by Stone).
• Thursday:
  • Discussion: Natural Born Killers
  • “The Rise and Decline of the Individual,” Horkheimer, Max. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Continuum, 1947.

Week 4:

• Tuesday:
  • “The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness: Repressive De-sublimation,” from Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man
• Thursday:
  • Group Discussion:

Heidegger’s Critique of Western Technology as a Mode of Revealing:

Week 5:

• Tuesday:
  • “The Question Concerning Technology,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. Willian Lovitt (New York, NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1977).
  • “Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics” from: Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge: MIT, 1991.
• Wednesday Evening Movies: Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (American, 1982, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke).
• Thursday: (Continued)
  • “The Question Concerning Technology,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. Willian Lovitt (New York, NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1977).
  • “Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics” from: Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge: MIT, 1991.

Week 6:

• Tuesday:
  • “The Thing” from: Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: HarperCollins, 1971.
• Wednesday Evening Movies: Powaqqatsi: Life in Transition (American, 1998, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music composed by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke).
• Thursday: (continued)
  • “The Thing” from: Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: HarperCollins, 1971.
  • Supplemental Recommended Reading: “The Age of the World Picture,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. William Lovitt (New York, NY: Haper Colophon Books, 1977).

Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of the Body and Flesh:

Week 7:

• Tuesday:
  • “Introduction,“ Toadvine, Ted. Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature.
  • “Radical Reflection and the Resistance of Things,” Toadvine, Ted. Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature.
• Wednesday Evening Movies: The Five Senses (Canadian, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, 1999)
• Thursday:
  • “The Human-Nature Chiasm,” Toadvine, Ted. Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature.
  • “Conclusion,” Toadvine, Ted. Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature.

Week 8:

• Tuesday:
  • “Introduction: The Value of Flesh: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy and the Modernism/Postmodernism Debate,” Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Flesh.
  • “Eco-phenomenology: An Introduction,” from Brown, Charles S. & Toadvine, Ted, eds. Eco- phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2003.
• Thursday:
  • “The Primacy of Desire and its Ecological Consequence,” Ted Toadvine, from Brown, Charles S. & Toadvine, Ted, eds. Eco-phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2003.

An Aesthetics of Nature: Martin Seel’s Aesthetic Critique of Modern Forgetfulness of Being:

Week 9:

• Tuesday:
  • “Preface,” Seel, Martin. The Aesthetics of Appearing.
  • “A Rough History of Aesthetics,” Seel, Martin. The Aesthetics of Appearing.
  • “Aesthetics as Part of Philosophy,” Seel, Martin. The Aesthetics of Appearing.
• Thursday:
  • Lecture: Precis of Martin Seel’s Eine Aesthetik der Nature.
  • “Aesthetic Arguments in the Ethics of Nature” Seel, Martin.

Week 10:

• Tuesday:
  • Student Declarations
• Thursday:
  • Student Declarations

Finals Week: