Abstract
In philosophical reflections on geoethics, it is primarily the question of what it means to be ‘part’ of the Earth system that is critically reflected upon. As the current geological era of the Anthropocene disrupts the dichotomy between Human agency and the Earth system, philosophers criticise a humanist account of geoethics and call for a post-humanist account. In this chapter, we critically engage with one specific proponent of the post-humanist position, Timothy Morton. We introduce his version of the post-humanist position by focussing on his call for the ‘end-of-the-world’ in the Anthropocene. We subsequently criticise Morton’s rejection of the World for three reasons. We show that the emergence of the Anthropocene is primarily an ontological phenomenon, namely a shift in our ‘being-in-the-world’ and that the concept of World is needed to understand the meaning of our ‘being-in-the-Anthropocene’ in contrast with our ‘being-in-the-Holocene’. We introduce a twofold between our ‘being-in-the-world’ as a symmetric relation and our ‘being-on-Earth’ as an asymmetric relation that constitutes our ‘being-in-the-Anthropocene’. This asymmetry disrupts the post-humanist position and calls for a conceptualisation of the human ethos beyond the post-humanist position. This conceptualisation of the human ethos also has consequences for our understanding of geoethics as geo-ethos.
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Notes
- 1.
Morton’s notion of eco-mimesis has little to do with biomimicry as it is generally understood [19].
- 2.
For an evaluation of the speculative realist criticism of correlationism, see Blok (2016).
- 3.
See, for instance, Niels Bohr’s ideas regarding quantum phenomena, which are subsequently confirmed by Morton: “Niels Bohr took this to be a warning not to think of quantum phenomena as real, but as correlations to (human) instruments. Instruments and quanta form a whole that cannot be further analysed. To this extent, as Bohr puts it, ‘there is no quantum world’. But an equally plausible view breaks the taboo on ontological interpretations and argues that the entanglement of equipment and quanta happens because of some deep further fact about the quantum (or even subquantum) level” [7, p. 37].
- 4.
Although Latour is one of the first authors to acknowledge the agency of things, his concept of, and interest in, networks is also limited mainly to the extent that human agency is involved, as Clark has convincingly shown [12, p. 37ev].
- 5.
Besides, Morton’s concept of eco-mimesis raises questions regarding the concept of ‘nature’, the oikos that absorbs the ‘self’ in the eco-mimesis and results in the no-self. He understands eco-mimesis as an ‘ambient poetics’ [20, pp. 32–33]. If we take the eco-centrism of eco-mimesis seriously, this implies that nature itself is understood as poetic as well; only if nature itself is understood as poetic, can an eco-centric eco-mimesis claim to be an ambient poetics. The claim that nature is poetic (poiesis) is not new but embedded in the metaphysical tradition; in the metaphysical tradition, nature is understood as poiesis, more particularly, auto-poiesis. In the literature on biomimicry also, nature is often understood as auto-poiesis, or the “will wherewith everything strives to persevere in its own existence” [21, p. 368]. Elsewhere, we have criticised this idea that nature has to be understood as auto-poiesis. The conceptualisation of nature as poiesis already implies that nature is understood in technological terms, namely, in terms of its productivity or makeability [19], whereas the technological production of artefacts is characterised by poiesis by an external agent, nature is characterised by auto-poiesis or self-making. A technological concept of nature can also be found in Morton’s work. Although he argues that his concept of nature is in no way comparable to the metaphysical conceptualisation he criticises, his ‘ambient poetics’ claims to evoke the goal, the material and the efficient processes of nature [7, pp. 33–34]. This shows that, at an ontological level, Morton conceptualises the sense of nature already in technological terms; apart from the formal element, these three aspects represent the classical categories of technology in Aristotelian philosophy. By understanding eco-mimesis as conveying the goal, material and efficient cause of nature, nature is in fact already understood as a technological object. At the epistemological level also, nature is already understood in technological terms. ‘Hyperobjects’ like global warming cannot be perceived directly, but only mediated via technological devices and statistics [7, pp. 38–39]. This means that Morton’s ecology without nature already presupposes an ecology without nature, because nature is a priori technologically mediated and understood. In this respect, his concept of eco-mimesis is not eco-centric but techno-centric.
- 6.
The fact that Morton himself is inconsistent and cannot avoid the use of the concept of the World in his writings—he, for instance, speaks about “a vaster world bursting in the human” [7, p. 108], thus still about a ‘World’—may be explained by his effort to reflect on the meaning of the Anthropocene for our place on Earth. As this article makes clear, reflection on the meaning of the Anthropocene requires the acceptance of a notion of the World, although not necessarily a human world.
- 7.
For an extended elaboration of Heidegger’s conceptualisation of world, see [17].
- 8.
The act of bringing yourself into the present moment; https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/presencing.
- 9.
Morton rejects any duality in the notion of Earth, namely as duality of our being-in-the-world as symmetric relation and our being-on-earth as asymmetric relation, because “there is no bottom level that is not a substantial formed object” [7, p. 44]. Morton argues that there are only discrete entities and no matter as such—an argument that inspired his ‘ecology without matter’ [7, p. 150]. According to Morton, material entities ‘contain’ [7, p. 41] or ‘manifest’ [7, p. 48] the materiality of the Earth. One of the problems with Morton’s position is that although he acknowledges the non-presence and uncanniness of material entities, his notions like containment, representation and manifestation cannot do justice to the non-identity of the materiality of the Earth which ‘withdraws’ from access in a fundamental way, that is, cannot be ‘contained’ or ‘manifested’ or in other words, cannot become ‘present’ in the re-presentation by material entities.
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Blok, V. (2021). Geoethics Beyond Enmeshment: Critical Reflections on the Post-humanist Position in the Anthropocene. In: Bohle, M., Marone, E. (eds) Geo-societal Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_3
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