I would like to discuss the possibility of a parallactic view of ecology and the environment. There is very little discussion of theoretical approaches to ecocriticism that is not either polarizing dualism or reactionary attempts to dissolve important boundaries between us and the space around us. I draw significantly on the work of Timothy Morton who in turn utilizes new readings of Descartes, Heidegger and other phenomenologists, Marx, and Lacan, among others, to discuss the aesthetic in eco-critique. This has (...) significant links to Zizek’s description of parallax and his positioning of Hegelian dialectics, in particular the need for tension between positions, determinate negation, and resurrection of irony as necessary for understanding paradox. (shrink)

Drawing on reflections from a collaborative autoethnography, this article argues that ultramarathon running is defied by a 'dark' ecological sensibility (Morton 2007, 2010, 2016), characterised by moments of pain, disgust, and the macabre. In contrast to existing accounts, we problematise the notion that runners 'use' nature for escape and/or competition, while questioning the aesthetic-causal relationships often evinced within these accounts. With specific reference to the discursive, embodied, spatial and temporal aspects of the sport, we explore the way in which (...) participants begin to appreciate the immense power of nature, while being humbled by the fragile and unstable foundations of human experience. Accordingly this article contributes novel insights into the human-nature complex that seek to move beyond Romantic analyses towards a more sophisticated understanding of the relationships between (nature) sport, people and place. (shrink)

Combining philosophical reflections with deep self-exploration to delve into the ancient mystery of death and rebirth, this book emphasizes collective rather than individual transformation. Drawing upon twenty years of experience working with nonordinary states, the author argues that when the deep psyche is hyper-simulated using Stanislaw Grof's powerful therapeutic methods, the healing that results sometimes extends beyond the individual to the collective unconscious of humanity itself.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

We tend to want to avoid and ignore our dark or difficult emotions, biases, and tendencies-and we eschew them on a cultural and societal level because they reveal painful, ugly truths. The labeling of darkness as "negative" becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes humans uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. Welcoming darkness with curiosity and reverence, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing. In Seeing with (...) the Heart, dharma teacher, shaman, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull asks us to recognize, explore, and engage with the darkness we experience in our lives in order to learn important lessons and tools for bringing awakening, healing, and compassion to ourselves-and to our world. In an age of global uncertainty, Tull presents the radical teaching of endarkenment--that we can only awaken to wholeness through fully embracing the dark. Darkness, she posits, is not the absence of light, but an intrinsic, vital, healing, and restorative aspect of nature. Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light over dark. She offers a radical path to wholeness that can be found only through learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light, within ourselves and within our world. She offers inspiring teachings, meditations, and mindful inquiry questions to integrate into our daily practice an experiential understanding of endarkenment. (shrink)

In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the highly successful _Ecological Ethics_, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and (...) class='Hi'>dark or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public. (shrink)

This essay conceives ecological life as radically dependent, vulnerable, and horrific. Epistemologically speaking, we are quite ignorant of the web of dependency that sustains our lives. Our ecological condition often prevents us from locating and identifying our dependencies and the many ways our actions impact the environment. This is the terror and danger that plagues the Anthropocene. Our ignorance bears an ontological weight that can be drawn out with the concept of trust. Trust, I argue, is not a choice. Trust (...) is a necessity to which we are riveted, and one that is always conditioned by our vulnerability and ignorance. The picture of ecological trust that I paint is not a hopeful one: it is dark, pessimistic, and urgent. It opposes visions of our future that are superstitious and optimistic about our ability to respond effectively to climate change. (shrink)

This book is a major new introduction to the field of ecological ethics. Taking issue with the common assumption that existing human ethics can be 'extended' to meet the demands of the ongoing ecological crisis, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. Focussing first on the major concepts of (...) ethics - religious and secular - and value, Curry then examines the gradations of ecological ethics. He discusses light green, shallow or anthropomorphic ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; mid-green or intermediate ethics represented by animal liberation/rights and biocentrism; and dark green, deep, or ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the various kinds of ecocentric ethics, such as the Land Ethic, The Gaia Hypothesis, and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered in this context. The concluding chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject. It will be of great interest to students, activists, and to a wider public concerned with the ecocrisis, its main theories, debates, and possible solutions. (shrink)

By utilizing words, photographs, and motion pictures, this multimodal and multisited project traces a rhizomatic genealogy of Russian Cosmism—a nineteenth century political theology promoting a universal human program for overcoming death, resurrecting ancestors, and traveling through the cosmos—throughout post-Soviet techno-utopian projects and imaginaries. I illustrate how Cosmist techno-utopian, futurist, and other-than-human discourse exist as Weberian “elective affinities” within diverse ecologies of the imagination, transmitting a variety of philosophies and political programs throughout trans-temporal, yet philosophically bounded, communities. With a particular focus (...) on the United States and Ukraine, and taking an apophatic analytical position, I dissect how different groups of philosophers, technologists, and publics interact(ed) with Cosmism, as well as how seemingly disparate communities (re)shape and deterritorialize Cosmist political theology in an attempt to legitimize their constructed political imaginaries. (shrink)

The ontological paradigms of Schelling and the late Merleau-Ponty bear striking resemblances to Spinoza’s ontology. Both were developed in response to transcendental models of a Cartesian mold, resisting tendencies to exalt the human ego to the neglect or the detriment of the more-than-human world. As such, thinkers with environmental concerns have sought to derive favorable ethical prescriptions on their basis. We begin by discerning a deadlock between two such thinkers: Ted Toadvine and Sean McGrath. With ecological responsibility in mind, both (...) actually resist Spinozist reduction of the human being to the status of a mere mode among modes. But despite having the same general aim, they end up endorsing contrary practical conclusions. Our objective is to pinpoint the reasons behind this deadlock, indicative of two strands of post-Spinozist environmental thought which stand in tension, and to begin to propose an integrative way forward. The ethical weight afforded by Toadvine to the notion of resistance in the work of the late Merleau-Ponty, namely nature’s resistance to harmonizing, unifying pretensions, invites inquiry into two Merleau-Pontean notions he does not address: the barbarian principle, and the proposal to “Do a Psychoanalysis of Nature.” We trace these to their origins in the works of Schelling’s middle period, arguing that the Schellingian location of resistance in Spirit’s dark ground—alternately conceived as primordial Dionysiac madness, bottled-up within the substratum of consciousness—lends to an understanding of the human, and human responsibility, that harbors favorable implications for environmental ethics. (shrink)

Species that died without leaving descendants Darwin called ‘utterly extinct’. They far outnumber the ancestors of all living things, so they resemble the dark matter of modern cosmology, which far outweighs visible matter. He realized in 1837 that their absence is what creates the groups in a natural classification. In his Notebook B he combined the idea that species multiply with the idea that ancestors' relatives must mostly be extinct. The fossil Megatherium was utterly extinct. The iconic branching ‘I (...) think’ diagram shows extinction causing the origin of genera by eliminating intermediate species. Darwin’s concept of taxonomic ranks, starting with the genus, was informed by his interaction with taxonomists. Based on his familiarity with demography, Darwin reasoned that the survival of transitional forms was unlikely, which helped him decide to focus at the species level. When drafting his theory in the 1840s, he left out these speculative ideas, but they emerged again in the 1850s when he realized his theory needed a cause for branches to diverge. His ecological answer worked at the species level, but his Principle of Divergence was unconvincing at higher taxonomic levels. In the Origin, Darwin repeatedly insisted on the importance of utter extinction. (shrink)

The smartphone can be considered a great example of how technology provides us with information at our fingertips anytime, anywhere. However, we have been operating mostly in the dark without a clear understanding of what our mobile devices have to offer and how people arrive at creative re-use as part of a problem-solving activity. This paper is an attempt to reach a better understanding of the conditions in which creative re-use of smartphones may take place. Our main goal is (...) to theoretically explore the role that the context of one’s activity may have in supporting creative re-use. We argue that the smartphone in itself cannot be separated from its cognitive ecology, but it is precisely the way in which it becomes permeable in the context that affords us to potentially come up with new uses and in doing so improve our ability to solve problems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ecological Ethics: An IntroductionDavid Keller (bio)Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2007, 173pages.Were I in Bath having drinks with Patrick Curry, we would have much to agree about. Explaining his choice of title of his book, Ecological Ethics, he rightly points out that the more common descriptor "environmental ethics" presupposes a dualism between human beings and the nonhuman environment—an assumption which is itself anthropocentric (...) (p. 4). For philosophers interested in studying the human/ nonhuman dynamic, the legitimacy of anthropocentrism is itself an open question. Because the word 'ecology' treats humans, as biota, as integral parts of ecological systems, the phrase "ecological ethics" is less presumptuous and hence more accurate. The word 'ecological' also has the benefit of conveying the message that the subject is notgoing to involve extending moral considerability from humans out into the "environment." Instead, ecological systems as the locus of value provide the starting point for the elaboration of ethics (p. 2). For Curry, as for Leopold (1960) and Callicott (1989), "ecological community" is coextensive with the ethical community.To correlate the ethical community with the biotic community within the rubric of "ecological ethics" is nothing novel. Curry's claim that "there is something ancient about an ecological ethic" (p. 7) got me thinking: [End Page 153]prior to Abrahamic monotheism and Greek rationalism, ancient peoples, particularly nomadic hunter-gatherers, probably considered themselves as integral parts of what encompassed them, moving with herds, in concert with meteorological and seasonal changes, seeing themselves as one amongst other living beings. They probably did not see themselves apart from the "environment" as we have learned to do. Then with the advent of agriculture, linear furrows and controlled inundations must have fostered an addictive sense of security from flood and famine. Later, the innovations of industrial civilization further distanced us from the caprice of nature's wild vicissitudes. Yet that comfort comes at the expense of lost awareness of our responsibilities as bioticcitizens. Therefore, Curry says, following Sylvan (1973), we need a new ecological ethic since traditional Western morality "is no longer up to the job" (ibid.).Curry remarks that ethics, cast in this light, is not something "optional," something to be addressed after one's belly is full, debts settled, and lodging secured. Rather, ethics cuts directly to the core of human action, of all human activity (p. 5)—a claim reminiscent of Socrates' exhortation to Thrasymachus that it is no small matter that they are discussing, nothing of less importance than the right way to live one's life (Plato 2005, p. 603).Over the first sips of ale, I would praise him for giving his book a simple and straightforward structure that makes a challenging subject accessible, especially to students. After laying down the groundwork of basic concepts in moral philosophy (chapter 3)—objectivism versus relativism, the problem of the is/ought gap, religious morality and environmental philosophy (domination, stewardship, and managerialism), and virtue and rule-based ethics (chapter 4)—Curry addresses axiology (chapter 5). Are humans the sole locus of value (anthropocentrism), or are there other entities worthy of some sort of moral consideration who themselves do not carry the burden of moral responsibility (zoocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism)? Curry answers the latter in the affirmative, arguing that ontological interconnectedness of humans with other living beings within ecological systems discloses that something greater than humanity is the locus of value (p. 46).The most useful part of the book for my students out in Utah would be the middle chapters (6–8) in which Curry casts degrees of nonanthropocentrism [End Page 154]in shades of green. These shades range from light green or "shallow" anthropocentric ethics such Bookchin's Social Ecology (p. 50), Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics (pp. 52–54), and mainstream environmentalism (p. 51), through medium green ethics based on the extension of traditional human-oriented moral philosophy to nonhumans such as Singer's Animal Liberation (pp. 56–59), Regan's Animal Rights (pp. 59–60), and Taylor's Biocentrism (pp. 60–62). Curry proceeds to the dark green ethics of ecocentrism, such as Land Ethics (pp. 65–68), the Gaia Hypothesis (pp. 68–71... (shrink)

Despite their diversity and ecological importance, many areas of the SAR—Stramenopila, Alveolata, and Rhizaria—clade are poorly understood as the majority of SAR species lack molecular data and only 5% of species are from well-sampled families. Here, we review and summarize the state of knowledge about the three major clades of SAR, describing the diversity within each clade and identifying synapomorphies when possible. We also assess the “dark area” of SAR: the morphologically described species that are missing molecular data. The (...) majority of molecular data for SAR lineages are characterized from marine samples and vertebrate hosts, highlighting the need for additional research effort in areas such as freshwater and terrestrial habitats and “non-vertebrate” hosts. We also describe the paucity of data on the biogeography of SAR species, and point to opportunities to illuminate diversity in this major eukaryotic clade. See also the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/_VUXqaX19Rw. Despite their diversity, abundance, and importance, fewer than 10% of the species within the SAR—Stramenopila, Alveolata, and Rhizaria—clade have been assessed using molecular tools. Only a small percentage of the molecular records contain information on ecology or have associate location data, indicating a tremendous dark area. (shrink)

Gordon Kaufman's theology is characterized by a heightened tension between transcendence, expressed as theocentrism, and immanence, expressed as theological naturalism. The interplay between these two motifs leads to a contradiction between an austerity created by the conjunction of naturalism and theocentrism, on the one hand, and a humanized cosmos which is characterized by a pivotal and unique role for human moral agency, on the other. This paper tracks some of the influences behind Kaufman's program (primarily H. Richard Niebuhr and Henry (...) Nelson Wieman) and then utilizes the flat ontology that emerges in the work of philosopher/sociologist of science Bruno Latour and of environmental philosopher Timothy Morton in order to point toward a reconstructed immanent theocentrism that no longer stakes meaning and value on the unique place of the human. Such a theology remains theocentric, but is now fully ecological. (shrink)

Despite their diversity and ecological importance, many areas of the SAR—Stramenopila, Alveolata, and Rhizaria—clade are poorly understood as the majority (90%) of SAR species lack molecular data and only 5% of species are from well‐sampled families. Here, we review and summarize the state of knowledge about the three major clades of SAR, describing the diversity within each clade and identifying synapomorphies when possible. We also assess the “dark area” of SAR: the morphologically described species that are missing molecular data. (...) The majority of molecular data for SAR lineages are characterized from marine samples and vertebrate hosts, highlighting the need for additional research effort in areas such as freshwater and terrestrial habitats and “non‐vertebrate” hosts. We also describe the paucity of data on the biogeography of SAR species, and point to opportunities to illuminate diversity in this major eukaryotic clade. (shrink)

This article draws upon the work of Timothy Morton and Slavoj Žižek in order to critically examine how mountain bike trail builders orientated themselves within nature relations. Beginning with a discussion of the key ontological differences between Morton’s object-oriented ontology and Žižek’s blend of Hegelian-Lacanianism, we explore how Morton’s dark ecology and Žižek’s account of the radical contingency of nature, can offer parallel paths to achieving an ecological awareness that neither idealises nor mythologises nature, but instead, acknowledges its (...) strange and contingent form. Empirically, we support this theoretical approach in interviews with twenty mountain bike trail builders. These interviews depicted an approach to trail building that was ambivalently formed in/with the contingency of nature. In doing so, the trail builders acted with a sense of temporal awareness that accepted the radical openness of nature, presenting a ‘symbolic framework’ that was amiable to nature’s ambivalent, strange and contingent form. In conclusion, we argue that we should not lose sight of the ambivalences and strange surprises that emanate from our collective and unpredictable attempts to symbolize nature and that such knowledge can coincide with Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ – an ecological awareness that remains radically open to our ecological existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism by K. Melchor Quick Hall and Gwyn KirkCecilia Herles (bio)K. Melchor Quick Hall and Gwyn Kirk, Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. ISBN- 978-1-7936-3946-2K. Melchor Quick Hall and Gwyn Kirk are leading feminist authors who have beautifully woven together an inspiring and diverse collection of essays in the (...) anthology, Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism. What does it take to gather together some of the most eloquent voices of activists, teachers, farmers, artists, and organizers in an anthology focused on engaging with and beyond ecowomanism and ecofeminism, and what could this cultivate? I find Hall and Kirk's reflections on the process and their approach to collaboration illustrate some of the tools needed to address complex issues of disasters, the global pandemic, climate justice, white supremacy, gender oppression, and practices of domination. Their approach is to build relationships, acknowledge vulnerability, and appreciate differences in experiences. It seems fitting that this project initially began with Margo Okazawa-Rey who connected Hall and Kirk together. Okazawa-Rey's introduction generated the openness needed to bring this collection to fruition. Mapping as the thematic image of this collection is found in destructive boundary-making, the violence of enslavement, wars, and the dumping of contaminants in the environment. Mapping is also evident in the physical, temporal, and evolving locations in which Okazawa-Rey's work of sustaining community and recognizing interconnections across locations opens up the time and spaces to envision peace.This collection marks a shift away from the elitism of academic spaces by illuminating connections between community and university, and actively resisting against patriarchal notions of what counts as expertise and scholarship. The anthology draws attention to personal experiences as fundamentally relevant to perspectives about place, location, and [End Page 97] belonging and relations with land, water, sky and nonhumans. It begins with an autobiographical account by Hall who brilliantly weaves together her life story with her analytical insight in illustrating how Black geographies show spaces as often hard to map and in flux for the marginalized. In "Darkness All around Me: Black Waters, Land, Animals, and Sky" Hall notes how she is unable to discuss her understanding and relationship with Nature outside of being a Black Woman. When she poses the question, "how would our maps be different if they were rooted in the histories and realities of people of color?" (23) Hall pivots mapping to the contingent, unstable complexities that mark Black people's relations with land and food. In doing so, Hall reveals compelling insights into trauma, anxieties, and relationships with land and water in shifting landscapes. Connecting to the mission of Soul Fire Farm, to resist the US food apartheid and mobilize towards food justice, Hall reveals the possibilities for reparative healing properties in agricultural activities at Soul Fire Farm. Hall's narrative about racialized hierarchies recognizes how human hierarchies are connected to human-nonhuman animal divisions, raising the question of "How might we imagine freeing ourselves and other animals from the systems that seek to devalue us as (human and nonhuman) beings?" (27). Hall intervenes and challenges geographical mapping centered in white frameworks rooted in claims of stolen territories and measured in segregation and displacement. Pointing to Black shoals, Black food geographies, and Afrofuturism, to name a few, Hall is marking potential paths to shared liberation. Although Hall does not identify strongly as ecofeminist nor ecowomanist, this provides a promising direction for ecowomanist and ecofeminist inquiries, speaking to the need to explore what it takes for shared liberation. This direction also has the potential to offer insight into an alternative mapping for disability justice. Hall's acknowledgement of "being out of place" connects to the disability justice work of Sunaura Taylor (2014) and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) in the mapping of access in describing surroundings and focusing on interconnectedness.In Kirk's autobiographical account, "Roots, Branches, Wings" she points to how Margo Okazawa-Rey (2020) introduced her to philosopher Alan Rosenberg's (1998) distinction between knowing and understanding. In contrast to knowing facts that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ecological Ethics: An IntroductionDavid Keller (bio)Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2007, 173pages.Were I in Bath having drinks with Patrick Curry, we would have much to agree about. Explaining his choice of title of his book, Ecological Ethics, he rightly points out that the more common descriptor "environmental ethics" presupposes a dualism between human beings and the nonhuman environment—an assumption which is itself anthropocentric (...) (p. 4). For philosophers interested in studying the human/ nonhuman dynamic, the legitimacy of anthropocentrism is itself an open question. Because the word 'ecology' treats humans, as biota, as integral parts of ecological systems, the phrase "ecological ethics" is less presumptuous and hence more accurate. The word 'ecological' also has the benefit of conveying the message that the subject is notgoing to involve extending moral considerability from humans out into the "environment." Instead, ecological systems as the locus of value provide the starting point for the elaboration of ethics (p. 2). For Curry, as for Leopold (1960) and Callicott (1989), "ecological community" is coextensive with the ethical community.To correlate the ethical community with the biotic community within the rubric of "ecological ethics" is nothing novel. Curry's claim that "there is something ancient about an ecological ethic" (p. 7) got me thinking: [End Page 153]prior to Abrahamic monotheism and Greek rationalism, ancient peoples, particularly nomadic hunter-gatherers, probably considered themselves as integral parts of what encompassed them, moving with herds, in concert with meteorological and seasonal changes, seeing themselves as one amongst other living beings. They probably did not see themselves apart from the "environment" as we have learned to do. Then with the advent of agriculture, linear furrows and controlled inundations must have fostered an addictive sense of security from flood and famine. Later, the innovations of industrial civilization further distanced us from the caprice of nature's wild vicissitudes. Yet that comfort comes at the expense of lost awareness of our responsibilities as bioticcitizens. Therefore, Curry says, following Sylvan (1973), we need a new ecological ethic since traditional Western morality "is no longer up to the job" (ibid.).Curry remarks that ethics, cast in this light, is not something "optional," something to be addressed after one's belly is full, debts settled, and lodging secured. Rather, ethics cuts directly to the core of human action, of all human activity (p. 5)—a claim reminiscent of Socrates' exhortation to Thrasymachus that it is no small matter that they are discussing, nothing of less importance than the right way to live one's life (Plato 2005, p. 603).Over the first sips of ale, I would praise him for giving his book a simple and straightforward structure that makes a challenging subject accessible, especially to students. After laying down the groundwork of basic concepts in moral philosophy (chapter 3)—objectivism versus relativism, the problem of the is/ought gap, religious morality and environmental philosophy (domination, stewardship, and managerialism), and virtue and rule-based ethics (chapter 4)—Curry addresses axiology (chapter 5). Are humans the sole locus of value (anthropocentrism), or are there other entities worthy of some sort of moral consideration who themselves do not carry the burden of moral responsibility (zoocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism)? Curry answers the latter in the affirmative, arguing that ontological interconnectedness of humans with other living beings within ecological systems discloses that something greater than humanity is the locus of value (p. 46).The most useful part of the book for my students out in Utah would be the middle chapters (6–8) in which Curry casts degrees of nonanthropocentrism [End Page 154]in shades of green. These shades range from light green or "shallow" anthropocentric ethics such Bookchin's Social Ecology (p. 50), Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics (pp. 52–54), and mainstream environmentalism (p. 51), through medium green ethics based on the extension of traditional human-oriented moral philosophy to nonhumans such as Singer's Animal Liberation (pp. 56–59), Regan's Animal Rights (pp. 59–60), and Taylor's Biocentrism (pp. 60–62). Curry proceeds to the dark green ethics of ecocentrism, such as Land Ethics (pp. 65–68), the Gaia Hypothesis (pp. 68–71... (shrink)

Bruno Latour (2004) claims that modernist critique, the kind that removes the false veils of ideology, ‘has run out of steam’. Despite its theoretical variety, it often consists in pointing out how...

Grove Press is proud to reissue this important work by one of Buddhism's leading contemporary teachers.

Horror movies consistently reflect metaphorical associations between verticality and affect, as well as between brightness and affect. For example, bad events happen when movie characters are going downwards, or when lights go off. Monsters and villains emerge from below and from the darkness. And protagonists get lost and stuck in dark underground caves, dungeons, tunnels, mines, bunkers or sewers. Even movies that are primarily set above ground or in bright light have the most suspenseful scenes happening beneath the ground (...) and in the dark. An analysis of several horror movies highlights the striking consistency with which the two metaphors “EVIL IS DOWN” and “EVIL IS DARK” are used within this genre. I will argue that these metaphors help in creating fear. Moreover, I will outline how cinematic manifestations of metaphor elaborate and extend metaphorical concepts and ultimately may have a formative role in keeping metaphors alive within a culture. (shrink)

Avatar, a passionate movie about empathy, features characters who, in various ways, are able to experience the world through the eyes of another or, as the saying goes, to “put themselves into another's shoes”. But, concealed beneath a surface of ecological pantheism, a contradiction lies at the heart of the movie's portrayal of empathy. On the one hand, in ordinary empathy access to another person's mind is mediated by our perception of her unique embodied identity. On the other hand, Avatar (...) introduces us to a seemingly more direct way to connect with the minds of others: tsaheylu – “the bond”. Mirror neurons are one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the last fifteen years. Mirror neurons testify that empathy, as usually experienced by terrestrial creatures like us, is nothing like a direct mental access. (shrink)

A sociological revision of Aron Gurwitsch provides a helpful layered theory of conscious experience as a four-domain structure: _the theme_, _the thematic field_, _the halo_, and _the social horizon_. The social horizon—the totality of the social world that is unknown, vaguely known, taken for granted, or ignored by the subject despite objectively influencing the thoughts and actions of the subject—, helps conceptualize how everyday human–computer interaction (HCI) can obscure social structures. Two examples illustrate the usefulness of this framework: (1) illuminating (...) new forms of social control known as “surveillance capitalism” that influence the other domains of consciousness despite being invisible to the subject and (2) explaining how computer use tends to “hide” the ecological impacts of digital-technological systems from the attention of subjects. A sociological four-domain theory of consciousness supplements ethnomethodological HCI research by preserving the field’s long-standing focus on micro-level interactions and user experience while simultaneously drawing attention to a “commonsense ignorance of social structure”—in this case, the invisibility of the social structures behind personal computer use. Social structure can be reproduced even when actors are unaware of engaging in its reproduction. (shrink)

We argue that the target authors focus too much on adaptive behavioralresponsesand not enough on actual psychologicaladaptations. We suggest the Dark Triad traits may represent facultative, psychological adaptations sensitive to seasonal variance and food shortages. We document that shorter distances from the equator are linked to higher national narcissism levels, whereas longer distances are associated with higher national-level machiavellianism. Dark Triad traits may serve as critical survival mechanisms when prioritizing oneself over and/or at the cost of others.

Self-cultivation—taking pedagogical action to educate oneself—is an integral part of non-formal adult education. Ever since Greek antiquity, it has been a central ingredient in the western philosophical and educational tradition. However, we argue that the global challenges that have emerged in the present era of the ecological crisis call for a new kind of understanding of this basic educational phenomenon. Based in particular on recent work in dark ecology and its central concept of the ‘uncanny’, we outline a (...) few key features of our time in relation to the contemporary challenge of self-cultivation. We then review extant literature on self-cultivation to ascertain whether the theoretical resources that have been used to conceptualise it in the past are capable of addressing these new aspects of self-cultivation. We conclude that each of the theoretical resources analysed here offer valuable insights into the novel challenges facing self-cultivation, though not all important questions can be answered. By specifying the contributions and limitations of these theoretical resources, we pave the way for future work on conceptualising self-cultivation for our times. (shrink)

The argument of ‘Nuclear Song’ is pursued at various extremities of the damage done to poetic imagination by what the poem never quite names as ‘the’ nuclear. ‘Nuclear Song’ opens with an epigraph asking how far human agency, even the resources of poetic song, are complicit with anthropogenic radioactivity. Is there a poetic grammar for representing nuclear plumes and umbrellas, the yellow cake and toxic clouds of nuclear trauma that radiate from Japan through the English language? Can poetry even be (...) written after and in the light of Fukushima? What future-proof forms of memory stewardship and signage can survive the ruins of nuclear wastelands? What happens to the lyric stanza when it is irradiated, its very atoms split and fused in new compounds? This song of the nuclear anthropocene attempts to find nodes and notes of resistance to the metaphorical radiation emanating from the dark ecology of nuclear horizons. Amid the ruins, alternative ecologies of mourning and reconciliation with nuclear pains are imagined: imagination dead imagine. The unnatural history born witness to concludes with glimpses of wild boars in the radioactive environs of Fukushima, boars in search of the truffles of scarred art with which the poem begins. (shrink)

This article considers the state of human beings in a post-postmodern conditions and focuses on obversion as one version of posthuman reality in polyversion, which is lusciousness. Obversion is regarded as a logical and at the same time dynamic figure of dis-identity and non-presence. Trying to find out if a real human being is written leads one to consider the relationship of real and written reality and the possibility of posthuman writing. Posthuman writing becomes apparent in tracks, traces, scars and (...) vestiges such an @ as a signifier of becoming t@iled. The vestiges of a human being are being investigated through the appeal to an actual post-postmodern conceptions such as speculative realism, speculative posthumanism, dark ecology, etc. In the post-postmodern context concepts such as trut/h, faith and kindness as a counterweight to the excessive postmodern quotation and theorization are being examined. Thus, a human being as a post-postscript is becoming a preface at the same time. This article explores such crucial postmodern issues as iterability, signature and others in a contingent context, in which an immanence of living itself becomes a writing in the postdigitality, post-Internet and post-media extent in relation to the realization of the disaster of technical or even mechanical as human. This research realizes on a showcase of post-postmodern architecture as an immanent spatiotemporal contingency, en-vironment of a human being. It shows how a minimalistic style in post-postmodern ethics and aesthetics correlates with obversive rocking in contrast to binary opposition logic. Thus, it realizes a movement from human to posthuman as scriptor, writing a postscript, and beyond to post-posthuman as postscriptor, writing a post-postscript as a human being, writing itself in its contingent immanence. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars studying the writing of the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey have attempted to use his ethical ideas to construct a viable environmental ethics. This endeavor has found limited success and generated some intriguing debates, but has been found wanting in many areas important to environmental ethicists of the twenty-first century. In particular, the humanist motivations behind many of his ethical writings stand in the way of a philosophy that takes nonhumans seriously. However, there is much environmental (...) philosophers can learn from Dewey, not from his ethics, but from his ontological writings. A concept of the contingency of existence, found in Dewey, in particular in Experience and Nature, can be the foundation for a robust, if dark, ecological philosophy. (shrink)

This textual/visual/filmic essay discusses the artist Rebecca Weisman’s short video Cadere and the Weal within a framework of dark ecology, Lacanian psychoalysis, sexuality/femininity, animal theory and the usefulness of abjection in understanding our relationship to a collapsing environment. It draws on both philosophical ideas and visual representation and seeks to find an intermediary space in which they can elucidate one another in a momentary balance, neither one “describing” the other. By challenging how we approach making representations of nature (...) and the environment, Weisman asks important questions about how we idealize, fetishize, pervert, and ultimately destroy the thing we are trying to capture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Techniques of the Self:Nourishing Life as Art of LivingLi Manhua (bio)Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life. By Eric S. Nelson. London and New York: Routledge, 2021.This essay proposes an account of the techniques of the self in early Daoism in light of Eric S. Nelson's Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life (Routledge, 2021). It argues that the techniques of the self involved in nourishing life (yangsheng 養生) are indispensable (...) to the creation of the interdependent human-nature rapport that Nelson considers. Such interdependence does not require a moralistic stance that negates the self or forsakes individual desires in the cause of the environment—as in some of the existing Western ecological discourse—but a new form of self-relation involving the practice of a set of techniques of the self that relates the human to the non-human. The present contribution begins by arguing that the practice of nourishing life entails a series of bodily and spiritual techniques (shu 術) of the self, with the example of Cook Ding. This is followed by my exposition of different categories of such techniques, and why the techniques of nourishing the spirit (shen 神) are prioritized over those of the preservation of the bodily form (xing 形). Finally, I extend my discussion on the specific techniques of nourishing the spirit with regard to his chapter "Emptying Ecology," where Nelson argues that undoing fixations of the self and being responsive (ying 應) to things are attainable through deconstructive, skeptical, and paradoxical communicative strategies (p. 80).To start with, Nelson regards nourishing life as a way of living and speaking that goes beyond the binary opposition or a hierarchical relation between the human and other forms of life in some Western ecological philosophies:In the current crisis conditions, it appears that humans need every motivating ecology available whether it be light or dark green, anthro- or bio-centric, shallow or deep. All of these contending discourses are equalized in a Daoist ecology of shifting perspectives and ways of speaking. A benefit of dao-centric models—that as inflections of the "way" encompass and extend beyond notions of "bios" (specific life) and "zōe" (life in general)—is that they contest the binary oppositions and stratified hierarchies that have dominated recent Western environmental discourses: anthropocentrism/biocentrism, and humanism/posthumanism [End Page 762] (although the latter finds biocentrism still too anthropocentric in positing the very distinction between them).(p. 31, my emphasis)In other words, a non-hierarchical and non-opposing rapport between the human and the non-human lies in a practice of changing perspectives and, more concretely and importantly, adjusting communicative ways. Such a way of perceiving and speaking beyond boundaries between the individual and the general forms of life (sheng 生) is epitomized by the practice of nourishing life of Cook Ding in the third chapter of the Zhuangzi 庄子, titled "The Master of Nourishing Life" (Yangsheng zhu 養生主). When Ding—Lord Wenhui's chef—cuts up an ox, he avoids violent and forced slaughter, slitting through the tender parts of the animal without touching any bone. As such, by concentrating only on the intestines of the ox, his movement is so agile that the knife produces a musical rhythm.More precisely, Nelson regards the example of Ding as "a cultivated and practiced process in which nature can come to be itself" (p. 36). In the context of the Zhuangzi, nature (tian 天) as an extension of the Dao goes beyond the "one-and-many" anthropocentric paradigm wherein humans have exclusive knowledge of the One, namely the unifying principle of reality (Chai 2018, p. 265). In this sense, specific life forms, bios, are undifferentiated from the wholeness of the One in the generic life, zōe. In other words, as the root of all life lies in Dao in terms of the onto-cosmological attunement of nothingness (wuwei 無為), our bodies (shen 身) mirror Heaven or Nature (tian 天) and the Earth (di 地) in the way they attune to the flow of vital energetic dynamics, responding to the myriad things and Heaven and Earth in an organic totality. This is manifest in Ding, as he nourishes life by turning his daily activity into a practice of encountering non-human life forms... (shrink)

The argument of ‘Nuclear Song’ is pursued at various extremities of the damage done to poetic imagination by what the poem never quite names as ‘the’ nuclear. ‘Nuclear Song’ opens with an epigraph asking how far human agency, even the resources of poetic song, are complicit with anthropogenic radioactivity. Is there a poetic grammar for representing nuclear plumes and umbrellas, the yellow cake and toxic clouds of nuclear trauma that radiate from Japan through the English language? Can poetry even be (...) written after and in the light of Fukushima? What future-proof forms of memory stewardship and signage can survive the ruins of nuclear wastelands? What happens to the lyric stanza when it is irradiated, its very atoms split and fused in new compounds? This song of the nuclear anthropocene attempts to find nodes and notes of resistance to the metaphorical radiation emanating from the dark ecology of nuclear horizons. Amid the ruins, alternative ecologies of mourning and reconciliation with nuclear pains are imagined: imagination dead imagine. The unnatural history born witness to concludes with glimpses of wild boars in the radioactive environs of Fukushima, boars in search of the truffles of scarred art with which the poem begins. (shrink)

Hoje tenho o prazer de receber aqui o filósofo Timothy Morton. Timothy Morton é professor na Rice University em Houston, EUA. Ele escreveu mais de quinze livros, como por exemplo: "Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of the world”, “Dark ecology”, “Being ecological”, “Ecology without nature” e muitos outros ótimos livros. Ele escreveu mais de 200 ensaios sobre filosofia, ecologia, literatura, música, arte, arquitetura, design e alimentação. Além disso, a obra de Morton foi traduzida em (...) 10 idiomas. Hoje vamos discutir muitas coisas, especialmente a interessante relação entre a Filosofia e a Ecologia. Professor Morton, muito obrigado por aceitar meu convite. (shrink)

We investigated how color preferences vary according to season and whether those changes could be explained by the ecological valence theory. To do so, we assessed the same participants’ preferences for the same colors during fall, winter, spring, and summer in the northeastern United States, where there are large seasonal changes in environmental colors. Seasonal differences were most pronounced between fall and the other three seasons. Participants liked fall-associated dark-warm colors—for example, dark-red, dark-orange, dark-yellow, and (...) class='Hi'>dark-chartreuse—more during fall than other seasons. The EVT could explain these changes with a modified version of Palmer and Schloss’ weighted affective valence estimate procedure that added an activation term to the WAVE equation. The results indicate that color preferences change according to season, as color-associated objects become more/less activated in the observer. These seasonal changes in color preferences could not be characterized by overall shifts in weights along cone-contrast axes. (shrink)

H. B. D. Kettlewell's (1955, 1956) classic field experiments on industrial melanism in polluted and unpolluted settings using the peppered moth, Biston betularia, are routinely cited as establishing that the melanic (dark) form of the moth rose in frequency downwind of industrial centers because of the cryptic advantage dark coloration provides against visual predators in soot-darkened environments. This paper critiques three common myths surrounding these investigations: (1) that Kettlewell used a model that identified crypsis as the only selective (...) force responsible for the spread of the melanic gene, (2) that Kettlewell's field experiments alone established that selection for crypsis was the most important factor in the spread of melanic forms, and (3) that Kettlewell's investigations in an unpolluted wood near Dorset constituted a control for his earlier Birmingham studies (contra Hagen 1993, 1996). This analysis further identifies two features that distinguish manipulative experiments in evolutionary biology from experiments in other contexts. First, experiments in evolutionary biology rest on a wealth of information provided by strictly observational ecological studies; in the absence of such information experiments in evolutionary biology make no sense. Second, there is a trade-off between how much control investigators have over the conditions being studied and how informative the results of the experiment will be with regard to natural populations. (shrink)

Biotopes and Bioethics are highly complex and adaptable systems of Bios. Individual bios is terminal, but the stream of Bios goes on. Basic properties of Bios such as communication and cooperation, competence and competition, contemplation and calculation, compassion and cultivation come in different shades of light and dark in individuals and species, in history and ecology. Hans-Martin Sass discusses the territories of Bios and Bioethics, based on his involvement in decades of consulting in academia, business and politics. Special (...) attention is given to the vision and role of Bioethics in research and training, in religious and cultural traditions, and in the survival, happiness, and health of corporate, social and political bodies. Hans-Martin Sass is Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Ruhr University, Bochum. (Series: Practical Ethics - Studies / Ethik in der Praxis - Studien, Vol. 40) [Subject: Bioethics]. (shrink)

H. B. D. Kettlewell's (1955, 1956) classic field experiments on industrial melanism in polluted and unpolluted settings using the peppered moth, Biston betularia, are routinely cited as establishing that the melanic (dark) form of the moth rose in frequency downwind of industrial centers because of the cryptic advantage dark coloration provides against visual predators in soot-darkened environments. This paper critiques three common myths surrounding these investigations: (1) that Kettlewell used a model that identified crypsis as the only selective (...) force responsible for the spread of the melanic gene, (2) that Kettlewell's field experiments alone established that selection for crypsis was the most important factor in the spread of melanic forms, and (3) that Kettlewell's investigations in an unpolluted wood near Dorset constituted a control for his earlier Birmingham studies (contra Hagen 1993, 1996). This analysis further identifies two features that distinguish manipulative experiments in evolutionary biology from experiments in other contexts. First, experiments in evolutionary biology rest on a wealth of information provided by strictly observational ecological studies; in the absence of such information experiments in evolutionary biology make no sense. Second, there is a trade-off between how much control investigators have over the conditions being studied and how informative the results of the experiment will be with regard to natural populations. (shrink)

Besieged by ongoing economic crises, global health emergencies, geopolitical instabilities, ecological devastation, and growing political resentments, the intractable nature of the problems that configure the present has never loomed larger or more darkly. But what, indeed, is a problem? Problematising the modern image that treats problems as obstacles to be overcome by the progress of technoscientific knowledge and policy, this introductory article lays the groundwork for a generative conceptualisation of problems. Reweaving intercontinental connections between traditions of French philosophy and American (...) pragmatism, it proffers a conception of the problematic as a mode of existence that is irreducible to the subjective, the methodological, or the epistemological. Problems go all the way down and up, requiring nothing less than an art of metamorphosis capable of engendering processes of creation, invention, and transformation in whose hold bodies and practices, knowledges and lives, thoughts and worlds, are done and undone, made and remade. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Unverborgenheit is truth in Heidegger's Greek-inspired view that happens in Entbergen, or bringing forth. Technology is a way of bringing forth and the truths brought forth in ancient and contemporary science-based technologies are essentially different, the latter being destined by enframing or Gestell that is the essence of contemporary science and technology. Here I give an etymological-ecological-feminist interpretation to the essences of ancient and contemporary technologies as ontogeneses and their unconcealments. A turning point is also identified, on the basis (...) of Carolyn Merchant's eco-feminist account of the mental-spiritual change due to technical change of earth-bound practices, specifically mining, during the commercial revolution and the rise of contemporary science. As Heidegger's wording strongly hints to mountains as salvaging the not-yet-concealed, and human relation to mountains as finding the concealed, Merchant's account of the female nature, or Mother Earth, and male science as penetrating her dark plots for secrets to be exploited by humans, and its connection to mining practices, seems in some respects to clarify Heidegger's somewhat dark notions of unconcealment and truth. RESUMEN Unverborgenheit es la verdad en el pensamiento heideggeriano de inspiración griega, esto ocurre en el Entbergen, o desocultamiento. La tecnología es una forma de desocultar, y las verdades desocultadas por las tecnologías de base científica en la antigüedad y en la época contemporánea son esencialmente diferentes; la última estaría determinada por lo dispuesto, o Gestell, que sería la esencia de la ciencia y tecnología contemporáneas. En este texto presento una interpretación etimológico-ecológico-feminista de las esencias de la tecnología antigua y contemporánea como ontogénesis y sus desvelamientos. También se puede apreciar un punto crucial en la aproximación eco-feminista de Carolyn Merchant al cambio mental-espiritual debido al cambio tecnológico de las prácticas ligadas a la tierra, en especial la minería, durante la revolución comercial y el surgir de la ciencia contemporánea. Como la terminología de Heidegger sugiere fuertemente a las montañas como salvando lo todavía no oculto, y a las relaciones humanas con las montañas como encontrar lo oculto, el enfoque de Merchant sobre la naturaleza mujer, o Madre Tierra, y la ciencia masculina que penetra en sus oscuras parcelas en busca de secretos para ser explotados por la humanidad, y su conexión con las prácticas mineras, parece clarificar en ciertos aspectos las oscuras nociones heideggerianas de desvelamiento y verdad. (shrink)

The modern idea of emancipation is linked to the goal of overcoming dependencies and domination. However, as argued in the article, negative dialectics of emancipation must also be problematized. The project of emancipation, as it was formulated in the Age of Enlightenment, was often particular and was associated with the establishment of new forms of domination. Especially the project of liberation from the constraints of nature through technical development led to the domination of nature. In view of the ecological crisis, (...) the dark side of this project is becoming apparent today. The ecological base of human development is at risk. It is therefore necessary to pursue the idea of a reflexive emancipation, which also takes nature into account in order to enable a sustainable technology development. Emancipatory Technology Studies should therefore support an emancipatory technology policy which promotes a positive dialectical movement that overcomes the contrast between submission to nature and technical mastery of nature. (shrink)

Both Nietzsche and Lawrence have been identified as important fore- runners and progenitors in the development of an ecocentric, “posthumanist” worldview. Nietzsche suggested, and Lawrence developed, the notion of an anti-mechanistic “gay science”. Both writers rejected the Christian denigration of nature, the Romantic notion of a “return to nature” and the instrumentalisation of nature by industrial rationality in favour of a conception of the good life founded in the body and an almost utopian “ascent to nature”. However, since the ascent (...) to nature required an overcoming of existing humanity, both Nietzsche and Lawrence faced the task of articulating a conception of the Over-man – or post-human, as contemporary theory would put it – that is not merely a figure of authoritarian brutality. Deep ecologist Del Ivan Janik has claimed that Lawrence “saw man as part of an organic universe, living best by acknowledging its wonder and rejecting the temptation to force his will upon it. In this sense he stands at the beginning of the modern posthumanist tradition and of the literature of environmental consciousness.” 1 Accurate as this assessment is, however, the struggle with questions of power, gender, sexuality and religion that early posthu- manism involved has tended to be airbrushed out of the dark green reading of Lawrence. And Lawrence's personal spiritual and intellectual struggle was also a creative conflict with Nietzsche. A useful point of departure is Anna Bramwell's comment in Ecology in the Twentieth Century on the somewhat surprising ubiquity of Nietzsche in ecophilosophical works, as it might be applied with equal force to Lawrence: Nietzsche ... is frequently described as an important figure. Why should this be? In reality, he does not conform at all to the model ecologist ... Yet Nietzsche still hovers, worrying but relevant. I will get on to the worries in due course; for the moment, a few words on the relevance of Nietzsche might be in order. For one thing, Nietzsche was not much interested in nature per se; unlike Lawrence, he never concerned himself with either natural beauty or the threat posed to it by late 19th century industrialisation. This may be due in part to his actual environment, which was largely congenial, as Robert Solomon reminds us: From snatches of prose, one might well conclude that Nietzsche wants nothing more fervently than the life of Conan the Barbarian, a role for which he, in particular, was notoriously ill-suited. "Live dan- gerously" he tells us, from the posher resorts in Southern Europe. It seems reasonable to suggest that if Nietzsche was more fascinated by the Provencal art of the troubadours than by the resistable rise of the capi- talist machine economy, his convalescent exile by the Med, away from the industrial heartlands of Northern Europe, may be partly responsible. His chief concern is the overcoming of the Christian and moral misreading of nature – especially human nature – and the corresponding articulation of what HM Robinson calls a “somatic conception of the good life” to replace it. However, Nietzsche only calls for such a conception, rather than fully elaborating it – let alone living it – so he has “little to say about how human intelligence could be so immanent in our physical being as to make our articulation of our physical will to power something expressive of a properly human nature and not of brute strength.” 4 In short, the problem is how to distinguish the ideal, noble Overman from the mere thug. We should not expect to find the close and often reverent attention to the non-human world as such that is an attractive and central feature of Lawrence's writing; Nietzsche's interest is lively but essentially abstract. (shrink)

In playfully pessimistic and thought-provoking essays, author Andrew McMurry explores a vital but fundamentally perverse human practice: destroying our planet while imagining we are not. How are humans able to do this? Entertaining Futility: Despair and Hope in the Time of Climate Change investigates the discourses of hope, progress, and optimism in the era of climate change, concepts that, McMurry argues, are polite names for blind faith, greed, and wishful thinking. The itemized list of humanity’s arrogance can quickly lead to (...) despair, so McMurry compensates by presenting the news in a darkly comic and irreverent style. McMurry believes human culture relies on a full suite of rhetorical tricks to distract us from our own demise. He investigates the role language, discourse, media, and technology play in shaping perceptions and misperceptions of our complex environmental crises. Writing in a mode that freely mixes the scholarly, fictive, poetic, and personal, McMurry draws on philosophy, history, ecology, film, science fiction, and pop culture to raise questions that are difficult to face, let alone answer. In the author’s words, “our age is utterly paralyzing unless you can crack jokes about it.” Entertaining Futility offers no easy solutions to today’s environmental calamities and, in fact, claims that perhaps the continual proposing of solutions is part of the problem. Instead, McMurry encourages readers to examine their own deeply held beliefs about the environment and the future and to look more closely at where those beliefs originate. By pulling back the curtain, he reveals the rhetorical and cultural ruses that distract us from the reality of our environmental crises. (shrink)

I examine the kindred phenomena of shadows and night in order to reveal their significance for better understanding our lifeworld and the elemental environment. I first describe how light is primary to ecological perception and how it conditions our conceptions of space, truth, and beauty. Light and darkness are involved in a dialectical relationship rather than conceived as polar opposites. Borne of the interplay of both realms, shadows have been disparaged historically and deserve to be reconsidered for their aesthetic appearance (...) and their relevance to an ecology and anthropology of perception. Night, in turn, is often marked by a negative ontology that points toward the possibility of a kind of elemental a priori, but it is important to characterize darkness in terms of its subtle shades and filtering by way of the creative matrix of the human imagination. Seeing the night in novel and unexpected ways, especially via the insights and descriptions of phenomenologists, poets, and artists, enables us to grasp the depth and atmosphere of the surrounding world and to light up our geographical perspectives, our philosophical visions, and our environmental awareness. (shrink)

In recent years a paradigm has emerged for which urban liveability coincides with the existence of conditions of order, rationality, predictability and safety. If we combine this with the enormous technological progress applied to the management of urban ecosystems and the strongly transitional nature of our age (digital transition, climate change, ecological transition...), we understand why in the last twenty years the concept of “Smart City” has been one of the most successful. But exactly what are we talking about when (...) we talk about Smart City? In reality, the process of smartification does not only concern the urban dimension but, in some way, seems to apply to so many aspects of life. What kind of rationality is hidden in the dynamics of smartification? Are there dark sides of the Smart Cities? Are there alternatives to the Order based on standardization, digital surveillance, massive use of increasingly invasive technologies? These are categories whose application is generally argued with the need to generate “sustainable” ways of life but to what extent are these categories sustainable themselves? Martin Heidegger warned that the fact that “everything works” is exactly the problem and not the solution. Is humanity generating an increasingly _irrational rationality_? The provocation launched by some Authors (above all Richard Sennett) is that there is the possibility of an antagonism to this process, designing cities as something open, never concluded, _dis-organized_. But what exactly does this disorder consist of? Is it a mere utopia or is it really possible to develop concrete categories and urban planning practices consistent with it? (shrink)