Living on Earth: Asking Philosophy for Directions
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Description
Book Introduction
This book diagnoses today's era of life crisis, in which not only humans, animals, and plants, but also the Earth itself, which is organically connected to all of them and serves as the basis for all life, living, and ecology, is facing a direct, realistic, and fatal threat. This book seeks to find alternatives in the light of philosophy by diagnosing the crisis of life through the wisdom of philosophers who ultimately question the very foundation of existence.
It diagnoses the problems of life with wild animals, factory farming, experimental animals, and animal rights, analyzes ecological problems into three categories: mental ecology, natural ecology, and social ecology, and dissects the problems of life with indicators of carbon-addicted civilization such as TV, cars, apartments, and meat consumption, but rearranges each problem within the philosophies of 20 philosophers ranging from Plato to Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Horkheimer, Murray Bookchin, Deleuze-Guattari, and Peter Singer, thereby restructuring the history of world philosophy into a 'history of ecological philosophy', and is also a 'future history of world philosophy'.
This is a revised and expanded edition of 『The Philosopher Who Went to Galapagos』, published in 2013.
It diagnoses the problems of life with wild animals, factory farming, experimental animals, and animal rights, analyzes ecological problems into three categories: mental ecology, natural ecology, and social ecology, and dissects the problems of life with indicators of carbon-addicted civilization such as TV, cars, apartments, and meat consumption, but rearranges each problem within the philosophies of 20 philosophers ranging from Plato to Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Horkheimer, Murray Bookchin, Deleuze-Guattari, and Peter Singer, thereby restructuring the history of world philosophy into a 'history of ecological philosophy', and is also a 'future history of world philosophy'.
This is a revised and expanded edition of 『The Philosopher Who Went to Galapagos』, published in 2013.
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index
Part 1: Animals, Life, and Philosophy
01_ Plato's Ideas and Animal Laboratory
A paradise for animal experiments, South Korea │ A world of ideas, a closed laboratory environment │ Minimum ethics for laboratory animals │ The ideas Plato envisioned, the ideas Plato could not conceive of │ Latour's anti-realism and social/ecological networks │ The ethics and aesthetics of the invisible
02_ Descartes' Automatic Machines and Factory-Style Livestock Farming
The 21st Century Animal Hell │ No Mercy for Automatons │ On Machines or Automatic Phenomenon │ Auschwitz and Automatons │ The Boundaries of Animals, Machines, and Humans │ For the Breath of Life
03_ Leibniz's monadology and animal rights
Beyond Human Rights to the Era of the Right to Life │Monadism's Reinstatement of Animal Soul Theory │Between Individualism and Ecocentrism │Monads Have No Window │The Long Debate Between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights │For the Right to Life and Freedom
04_ Peter Singer's Utilitarianism and Animal Liberation
Animals that Feel Pain │ Peter Singer's 'Utilitarianism' and Animals │ Speciesism? Interspecies Difference? │ Two Paths to 'Spontaneity' │ Beyond the Prohibition of Animal Cruelty to Animal Liberation
05_ Deleuze and Guattari's Becoming Animal and Wildlife Protection
Nature was originally the territory of wild animals. │One dog or many wolves? │Zoos and | Asking philosophy for guidance on Earth's survival. Civilizing wild animals. │Becoming animals. │Animals' inexpressible semiotics. │Restoring the wildness of desire.
Part 2: Three Ecologies
06_ Katari's Ecosophy and Radical Ecology
What is Radical Ecology? │Encountering Guattari's "Three Ecologies" │The Salamander Lawsuit: A Movement of the Mind │The Ecology of the Mind │The Postmodern Transformation of Spirituality: The Production of Subjectivity │Guattari's "Ecosophie" and the Starry Night
07_ Murray Bookchin's Anti-Capitalism and Social Ecology
What is Social Ecology? │ A Critique of Bukchin's Radical Ecology │ The Buan Anti-Nuclear Commune │ Ecology in the Context of Social Transformation │ Anti-Capitalist, Anti-State, Anti-Authority Communist Perspectives │ The Ecological Movement and the Changing Social Relations
08_ Kant's synthetic a priori propositions and environmental stewardship
What is Environmental Stewardship? │Kant and the Copernican Turn │The Taean Disaster and the Innovation of Environmental Stewardship │The Ecological Implications of the "Transcendental Synthesis" Proposition │Epistemological Constructivism │Human Intervention and Management in the Face of Ecosystem Destruction
Part 3: Carbon-Addicted Civilization
09_ Hobbes's theory of matter and apartment civilization
Beyond the Apartment to the Village │ Hobbes's View of Selfish Individuals │ The Village is Here and Now │ Materialism and Apartment Structure - Illusion │ People's War and Leviathan │ People Who Ran Out of the Apartment
10_ Virilio's War Machine and Automobile Civilization
Fascism as Speed │Virilio's 'Politics of Speed' │Bicycles Ride in the City │Speed, Weapons, and the Barricades of Time │The Final Conclusion of Speed Civilization: The Nuclear State │The Possibilities of Slowness and Space Missed by Speed
11_ Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle and TV Civilization
The Idiot Box That Tells Lies │ Guy Debord and the Situationist International │ The Free Radio Movement │ Images and Fetishism │ The Logic of Spectacle Beyond Contemplation │ Beyond TV Civilization
12_ Horkheimer's instrumental reason and carnivore civilization
The Shadow of the Carnivore Civilization │ Horkheimer and the Critique of Instrumental Reason │ The Rise and Development of the Vegetarian Movement │ The Relationship Between Domination of Nature and Domination of Humans │ Beyond Modern Reason and Fascism │ Beyond Carnivore Eating to Coexistence with Life
Part 4: Energy, Peak Oil
13_ Nietzsche's Superman and Nuclear Energy
The Fukushima incident that divided the century of civilization │ Nuclear power, the superhuman ideology accepted by the Nazis │ The anti-nuclear and life-and-peace movement │ The morality of the master, the morality of the slave │ An anachronistic reflection on 'the loss of time' │ Beyond nuclear power, toward a world of life and peace
14_ Foucault's Microphysics of Power and Fossil Energy
Neutralizing Peak Fossil Fuels and Shale Oil │Energy is Micropower │Cuban Response to the Oil Blockade and Food Crisis │Micropower and Deployment │Biopolitics and Fossil Fuels │Is a Post-Fossil Energy Transitional Society Possible?
15_ Reich's Orgone and Renewable Energy
Solar Power Plants, Back to the Future │ Reich, In Search of the Roots of Life Energy │ Various Issues in Renewable Energy │ 'Bion', Ecosystems, and Renewable Energy │ Orgone Energy of Life Against the Radioactive Energy of Death │ Towards a Land of Sun and Wind
Part 5: The Limits to Growth
16_ Freud's Unconscious and the Climate Crisis
The Inconvenient Truth of the Climate Crisis │ Freud's Psychodynamic Theory of the Unconscious │ Climate Crisis and the Carbon Economy, Green New Deal, and Climate Finance │ Carbon Unconsciousness: The Placement of the Unconscious and Carbon Consumption │ Climate Crisis and the Unconscious │ Is a Carbon Circular Unconscious Possible?
17_ Marx's Productivism and Growthism
Maturity of Internal Networks Over External Growth! │Marx's Communist Manifesto and Productivism │Fields Instead of Development! │The Shadow of Growth │The Law of Value in Capital and Its Externals │Towards a Degrowth, Deconstruction-Free Society
18_ Hegel's Dialectics and Biodiversity
Biodiversity, Our Life and Living │ Hegel and Dialectics │ Biodiversity and Seed Sovereignty │ The Logic of Being-Non-Becoming and Life │ Master and Slave's Struggle for Recognition and Biodiversity │ Biodiversity and Our Future
19_ Spinoza's Pantheism and Ecological Conservation
The invisible but precious value of the ecosystem │ Spinoza's very unique book, 『Ethics』 │ Peace and ecosystem in Gangjeong │ Pantheism and ecological wisdom │ Immanence and ecosystem │ The invisible network of the ecosystem and a society of circulation and regeneration
01_ Plato's Ideas and Animal Laboratory
A paradise for animal experiments, South Korea │ A world of ideas, a closed laboratory environment │ Minimum ethics for laboratory animals │ The ideas Plato envisioned, the ideas Plato could not conceive of │ Latour's anti-realism and social/ecological networks │ The ethics and aesthetics of the invisible
02_ Descartes' Automatic Machines and Factory-Style Livestock Farming
The 21st Century Animal Hell │ No Mercy for Automatons │ On Machines or Automatic Phenomenon │ Auschwitz and Automatons │ The Boundaries of Animals, Machines, and Humans │ For the Breath of Life
03_ Leibniz's monadology and animal rights
Beyond Human Rights to the Era of the Right to Life │Monadism's Reinstatement of Animal Soul Theory │Between Individualism and Ecocentrism │Monads Have No Window │The Long Debate Between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights │For the Right to Life and Freedom
04_ Peter Singer's Utilitarianism and Animal Liberation
Animals that Feel Pain │ Peter Singer's 'Utilitarianism' and Animals │ Speciesism? Interspecies Difference? │ Two Paths to 'Spontaneity' │ Beyond the Prohibition of Animal Cruelty to Animal Liberation
05_ Deleuze and Guattari's Becoming Animal and Wildlife Protection
Nature was originally the territory of wild animals. │One dog or many wolves? │Zoos and | Asking philosophy for guidance on Earth's survival. Civilizing wild animals. │Becoming animals. │Animals' inexpressible semiotics. │Restoring the wildness of desire.
Part 2: Three Ecologies
06_ Katari's Ecosophy and Radical Ecology
What is Radical Ecology? │Encountering Guattari's "Three Ecologies" │The Salamander Lawsuit: A Movement of the Mind │The Ecology of the Mind │The Postmodern Transformation of Spirituality: The Production of Subjectivity │Guattari's "Ecosophie" and the Starry Night
07_ Murray Bookchin's Anti-Capitalism and Social Ecology
What is Social Ecology? │ A Critique of Bukchin's Radical Ecology │ The Buan Anti-Nuclear Commune │ Ecology in the Context of Social Transformation │ Anti-Capitalist, Anti-State, Anti-Authority Communist Perspectives │ The Ecological Movement and the Changing Social Relations
08_ Kant's synthetic a priori propositions and environmental stewardship
What is Environmental Stewardship? │Kant and the Copernican Turn │The Taean Disaster and the Innovation of Environmental Stewardship │The Ecological Implications of the "Transcendental Synthesis" Proposition │Epistemological Constructivism │Human Intervention and Management in the Face of Ecosystem Destruction
Part 3: Carbon-Addicted Civilization
09_ Hobbes's theory of matter and apartment civilization
Beyond the Apartment to the Village │ Hobbes's View of Selfish Individuals │ The Village is Here and Now │ Materialism and Apartment Structure - Illusion │ People's War and Leviathan │ People Who Ran Out of the Apartment
10_ Virilio's War Machine and Automobile Civilization
Fascism as Speed │Virilio's 'Politics of Speed' │Bicycles Ride in the City │Speed, Weapons, and the Barricades of Time │The Final Conclusion of Speed Civilization: The Nuclear State │The Possibilities of Slowness and Space Missed by Speed
11_ Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle and TV Civilization
The Idiot Box That Tells Lies │ Guy Debord and the Situationist International │ The Free Radio Movement │ Images and Fetishism │ The Logic of Spectacle Beyond Contemplation │ Beyond TV Civilization
12_ Horkheimer's instrumental reason and carnivore civilization
The Shadow of the Carnivore Civilization │ Horkheimer and the Critique of Instrumental Reason │ The Rise and Development of the Vegetarian Movement │ The Relationship Between Domination of Nature and Domination of Humans │ Beyond Modern Reason and Fascism │ Beyond Carnivore Eating to Coexistence with Life
Part 4: Energy, Peak Oil
13_ Nietzsche's Superman and Nuclear Energy
The Fukushima incident that divided the century of civilization │ Nuclear power, the superhuman ideology accepted by the Nazis │ The anti-nuclear and life-and-peace movement │ The morality of the master, the morality of the slave │ An anachronistic reflection on 'the loss of time' │ Beyond nuclear power, toward a world of life and peace
14_ Foucault's Microphysics of Power and Fossil Energy
Neutralizing Peak Fossil Fuels and Shale Oil │Energy is Micropower │Cuban Response to the Oil Blockade and Food Crisis │Micropower and Deployment │Biopolitics and Fossil Fuels │Is a Post-Fossil Energy Transitional Society Possible?
15_ Reich's Orgone and Renewable Energy
Solar Power Plants, Back to the Future │ Reich, In Search of the Roots of Life Energy │ Various Issues in Renewable Energy │ 'Bion', Ecosystems, and Renewable Energy │ Orgone Energy of Life Against the Radioactive Energy of Death │ Towards a Land of Sun and Wind
Part 5: The Limits to Growth
16_ Freud's Unconscious and the Climate Crisis
The Inconvenient Truth of the Climate Crisis │ Freud's Psychodynamic Theory of the Unconscious │ Climate Crisis and the Carbon Economy, Green New Deal, and Climate Finance │ Carbon Unconsciousness: The Placement of the Unconscious and Carbon Consumption │ Climate Crisis and the Unconscious │ Is a Carbon Circular Unconscious Possible?
17_ Marx's Productivism and Growthism
Maturity of Internal Networks Over External Growth! │Marx's Communist Manifesto and Productivism │Fields Instead of Development! │The Shadow of Growth │The Law of Value in Capital and Its Externals │Towards a Degrowth, Deconstruction-Free Society
18_ Hegel's Dialectics and Biodiversity
Biodiversity, Our Life and Living │ Hegel and Dialectics │ Biodiversity and Seed Sovereignty │ The Logic of Being-Non-Becoming and Life │ Master and Slave's Struggle for Recognition and Biodiversity │ Biodiversity and Our Future
19_ Spinoza's Pantheism and Ecological Conservation
The invisible but precious value of the ecosystem │ Spinoza's very unique book, 『Ethics』 │ Peace and ecosystem in Gangjeong │ Pantheism and ecological wisdom │ Immanence and ecosystem │ The invisible network of the ecosystem and a society of circulation and regeneration
Into the book
People already know what factory farms are like.
However, it is an inconvenient truth, and we want to forget it as we become immersed in a consumer culture that is far removed from the nature of life.
Yet, people say that their situation is miserable, working like automatons at work to afford such consumption.
To truly create a world where life can breathe, we must change our attitudes and thoughts toward life.
Then our own lives will change too.
We might be able to create a society where we don't have to work like automatons.
While sketching a brief philosophical sketch of how Descartes's idea of the physical realm as an automaton extended to the realm of animals, resulting in factory farming, I wondered what lay outside this framework.
I wonder if there is a delicate and beautiful breath of life, like the inhalation and exhalation of the little cat sleeping next to me.
With hope and optimism that it is possible to see the world beautifully by seeing life beautifully.
--- p.52-53
Many people visit the zoo on weekends to enjoy leisure activities and provide experiences for their children.
But zoos are not places of learning, they are places of abuse.
Children often see animals sitting idly in cages, which leads them to mistakenly believe that animals are helpless and listless, rather than autonomous.
And to attract more visitors, zoos put on animal shows that look like something out of a TV or movie.
(Omitted) The zoo symbolizes human civilization's attitude toward wild animals, and at the same time, it is an experiential space that bizarrely shows the extremes that adult society can take in the process of educating children.
Because children, like animals, are beings with autonomy and desire to form wild groups.
--- p.100
In his book, “Three Ecologies,” French philosopher Guattari emphasized the importance of social ecology along with mental ecology and natural ecology, and said that it would be impossible to respond to the ecological crisis without changes in social relationships and arrangements.
Katari calls for action as strategic allies, incorporating Bookchin's social ecology into his "three ecologies."
Even without mentioning the Three Ecologies, which serve as a strategic map for the French Green Party and green politics, it is clear that Bookchin's social ecology occupies an important position in contemporary ecological thought.
Bookchin's idea that the communist movement that transforms capitalist society will overcome the ecological crisis is tantamount to an appeal not to give up on the potential of human society.
Bookchin's social ecology appeals to the potential for social transformation held by social networks such as communes, arguing that we can overcome capitalism, the main culprit of the ecological crisis.
--- p.151-152
Today, getting into a speeding car is like getting on a ballistic missile bound for a dark future.
Virilio calmly discusses how speed has destroyed the workers' movement and undermined the proletariat's revolutionary strategy, and his diagnosis is that the means of transportation and communication that generate speed should be viewed at the level of weapons of war.
In modern warfare, stasis means death, and the new form of warfare is to detect the enemy within by destroying existing networks at the speed of light.
The remarkable development of the information and communication revolution since the Cold War has also shifted its focus from external enemies to internal ones, but it can be seen as a weapon of war that constantly accelerates its pace to confront internal enemies.
As cars speed by, what they destroy is not only the environment or life, but also our own lives.
Because the spatial and territorial meaning of life has been completely destroyed, and the automobile has destroyed the web of relationships in life, making us completely forget how rich and diverse our own places and territories can be.
So, while cars may seem like they are for our convenience, they may actually be weapons aimed at us.
--- p.210
The Nazis' nuclear development efforts were centered around the German Post Office, which initially invested a huge amount of material and manpower, but later financial support was weakened due to the judgment that it would be disadvantageous for the Nazis to prolong the war until they developed nuclear weapons.
At the time, Heisenberg, who had become famous for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, was involved in the Nazis' development of nuclear weapons as the director of the Berlin Physical Institute.
Historians have conducted research and discovered that ships carrying heavy water for the Nazis' atomic bomb development were destroyed by the Allied forces, and that Nazi nuclear weapons technology paved the way for the completion of the Manhattan Project, the United States' nuclear development program.
Regardless of how historical empirical research is conducted, the Allied occupation of Germany, led by the United States, appears to have halted the Nazis' development of nuclear weapons and transferred that technology to the United States and other Allied nations.
The Nazis' attempts to develop nuclear weapons were a direct result of their intuitive observation that Nietzsche's idea of the superman could in fact be realized through nuclear weapons.
The principle of the atomic bomb, that a collision of atoms in a very localized and partial area can lead to a chain reaction that destroys the entire society, follows the trajectory of the idea of the superman, who is both a creator and a destroyer of value.
Nuclear energy may be another form of the superhuman, a quantum-level value creator who can create novel movements independent of the principles of life and ecosystems.
In that respect, nuclear energy can be said to be the only energy source on Earth that breathes of fascism.
--- p.273-274
The problem with the climate crisis is not that civilization is not functioning properly, but that it is functioning too well as usual.
In that sense, it is difficult to imagine fundamental change unless a green transition takes place.
The green transition essentially means making ourselves more uncomfortable and giving up things we enjoyed when civilization was running smoothly. I think that only by changing from an energy-intensive life to a lifestyle based on renewable energy and other sources of energy that we consume less, save more, reduce and limit, can we find a glimmer of hope in tackling the climate crisis.
In that sense, when we move beyond the era where everyone was rushing to become rich and toward the era where everyone is heading toward becoming poor, the solution to the climate crisis may be easier to find than expected.
--- p.340
The discussion of biodiversity has the aspect of ending the debate between the two perspectives of 'individualism' and 'ecocentrism'.
There are aspects that can be overcome in both the position that criticizes individualism for being overly concerned with the rights and welfare of each individual life form and the position that criticizes ecocentrism for being overly disregardful of the autonomy of individuals.
Because biodiversity encompasses both individual and ecological aspects.
Biodiversity is a concept that raises interest in the preservation of individual plants and animals, as well as the ecosystem that biodiversity creates.
Hegel's position on the struggle for recognition has an individualistic bias based on 'anthropocentrism'.
However, we must recognize that within the radius of the sacred family, there are living creatures such as flowers, butterflies, puppies, and trees, and understand that they are not objects to be established from the perspective of human individuals, but rather multiple entities that coexist and are simultaneously part of an ecosystem.
However, it is an inconvenient truth, and we want to forget it as we become immersed in a consumer culture that is far removed from the nature of life.
Yet, people say that their situation is miserable, working like automatons at work to afford such consumption.
To truly create a world where life can breathe, we must change our attitudes and thoughts toward life.
Then our own lives will change too.
We might be able to create a society where we don't have to work like automatons.
While sketching a brief philosophical sketch of how Descartes's idea of the physical realm as an automaton extended to the realm of animals, resulting in factory farming, I wondered what lay outside this framework.
I wonder if there is a delicate and beautiful breath of life, like the inhalation and exhalation of the little cat sleeping next to me.
With hope and optimism that it is possible to see the world beautifully by seeing life beautifully.
--- p.52-53
Many people visit the zoo on weekends to enjoy leisure activities and provide experiences for their children.
But zoos are not places of learning, they are places of abuse.
Children often see animals sitting idly in cages, which leads them to mistakenly believe that animals are helpless and listless, rather than autonomous.
And to attract more visitors, zoos put on animal shows that look like something out of a TV or movie.
(Omitted) The zoo symbolizes human civilization's attitude toward wild animals, and at the same time, it is an experiential space that bizarrely shows the extremes that adult society can take in the process of educating children.
Because children, like animals, are beings with autonomy and desire to form wild groups.
--- p.100
In his book, “Three Ecologies,” French philosopher Guattari emphasized the importance of social ecology along with mental ecology and natural ecology, and said that it would be impossible to respond to the ecological crisis without changes in social relationships and arrangements.
Katari calls for action as strategic allies, incorporating Bookchin's social ecology into his "three ecologies."
Even without mentioning the Three Ecologies, which serve as a strategic map for the French Green Party and green politics, it is clear that Bookchin's social ecology occupies an important position in contemporary ecological thought.
Bookchin's idea that the communist movement that transforms capitalist society will overcome the ecological crisis is tantamount to an appeal not to give up on the potential of human society.
Bookchin's social ecology appeals to the potential for social transformation held by social networks such as communes, arguing that we can overcome capitalism, the main culprit of the ecological crisis.
--- p.151-152
Today, getting into a speeding car is like getting on a ballistic missile bound for a dark future.
Virilio calmly discusses how speed has destroyed the workers' movement and undermined the proletariat's revolutionary strategy, and his diagnosis is that the means of transportation and communication that generate speed should be viewed at the level of weapons of war.
In modern warfare, stasis means death, and the new form of warfare is to detect the enemy within by destroying existing networks at the speed of light.
The remarkable development of the information and communication revolution since the Cold War has also shifted its focus from external enemies to internal ones, but it can be seen as a weapon of war that constantly accelerates its pace to confront internal enemies.
As cars speed by, what they destroy is not only the environment or life, but also our own lives.
Because the spatial and territorial meaning of life has been completely destroyed, and the automobile has destroyed the web of relationships in life, making us completely forget how rich and diverse our own places and territories can be.
So, while cars may seem like they are for our convenience, they may actually be weapons aimed at us.
--- p.210
The Nazis' nuclear development efforts were centered around the German Post Office, which initially invested a huge amount of material and manpower, but later financial support was weakened due to the judgment that it would be disadvantageous for the Nazis to prolong the war until they developed nuclear weapons.
At the time, Heisenberg, who had become famous for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, was involved in the Nazis' development of nuclear weapons as the director of the Berlin Physical Institute.
Historians have conducted research and discovered that ships carrying heavy water for the Nazis' atomic bomb development were destroyed by the Allied forces, and that Nazi nuclear weapons technology paved the way for the completion of the Manhattan Project, the United States' nuclear development program.
Regardless of how historical empirical research is conducted, the Allied occupation of Germany, led by the United States, appears to have halted the Nazis' development of nuclear weapons and transferred that technology to the United States and other Allied nations.
The Nazis' attempts to develop nuclear weapons were a direct result of their intuitive observation that Nietzsche's idea of the superman could in fact be realized through nuclear weapons.
The principle of the atomic bomb, that a collision of atoms in a very localized and partial area can lead to a chain reaction that destroys the entire society, follows the trajectory of the idea of the superman, who is both a creator and a destroyer of value.
Nuclear energy may be another form of the superhuman, a quantum-level value creator who can create novel movements independent of the principles of life and ecosystems.
In that respect, nuclear energy can be said to be the only energy source on Earth that breathes of fascism.
--- p.273-274
The problem with the climate crisis is not that civilization is not functioning properly, but that it is functioning too well as usual.
In that sense, it is difficult to imagine fundamental change unless a green transition takes place.
The green transition essentially means making ourselves more uncomfortable and giving up things we enjoyed when civilization was running smoothly. I think that only by changing from an energy-intensive life to a lifestyle based on renewable energy and other sources of energy that we consume less, save more, reduce and limit, can we find a glimmer of hope in tackling the climate crisis.
In that sense, when we move beyond the era where everyone was rushing to become rich and toward the era where everyone is heading toward becoming poor, the solution to the climate crisis may be easier to find than expected.
--- p.340
The discussion of biodiversity has the aspect of ending the debate between the two perspectives of 'individualism' and 'ecocentrism'.
There are aspects that can be overcome in both the position that criticizes individualism for being overly concerned with the rights and welfare of each individual life form and the position that criticizes ecocentrism for being overly disregardful of the autonomy of individuals.
Because biodiversity encompasses both individual and ecological aspects.
Biodiversity is a concept that raises interest in the preservation of individual plants and animals, as well as the ecosystem that biodiversity creates.
Hegel's position on the struggle for recognition has an individualistic bias based on 'anthropocentrism'.
However, we must recognize that within the radius of the sacred family, there are living creatures such as flowers, butterflies, puppies, and trees, and understand that they are not objects to be established from the perspective of human individuals, but rather multiple entities that coexist and are simultaneously part of an ecosystem.
--- p.392
Publisher's Review
The COVID-19 pandemic is a double-edged sword for humanity.
It is positive that this has served as an opportunity to realize that the disaster of ecosystem destruction is deepening beyond humans to the entire ecosystem and ultimately to the entire planet. However, by focusing our capabilities on solving the immediate tasks of preventing the spread of COVID-19, treating confirmed cases, and developing treatments and vaccines, we are increasingly moving away from the golden time to fundamentally and effectively deal with the climate crisis and the global crisis of mass extinction, which are approaching as bigger tsunamis.
COVID-19 has brought about a double awareness in humans in another sense.
One is that the greatness of human existence is sometimes so insignificant that the safety of all humanity is threatened by viruses that are 'questionably alive' and microscopic organisms that are difficult to see even with a microscope. The other is that our existence and life are interconnected, from these microscopic organisms to global catastrophes and climate crises.
This is a fact that was already widely discussed and familiar even before the advent of COVID-19, but COVID-19 has reaffirmed its truth and made it a point to be convinced again and again through experience.
It seems clear that 2020, the year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, will mark a new turning point in human history.
And at that turning point, it seems that the important axis is/should be to move in the direction of realizing the preciousness of life, ecology, and living not as an idea or theory, but as our lives, movements, and politics (laws or systems).
On the other hand, the trends of growthism/materialism/scientism since the modern era still have power and will continue to forge their own path by presenting their own vision… .
Just as the Renaissance led to the rediscovery of ancient (Greek) philosophy during the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era, the rediscovery of philosophy is equally crucial in the transition from the "before" to the "after" COVID-19 world.
A new world, a new life, a new being must be achieved through a thorough 'newness' not only of will but also of thought, conception, and custom.
As a movement at the level of a mere reform or campaign, such novelty would quickly be devoured by modern civilization, a gigantic gluttonous machine based on human instinctual desires.
This is also evident in the course of modern civilization, which has grown over the past several hundred years based on capitalism, materialism, and individualism.
Modern civilization, which was very recently divided into liberalism and socialism (communism), is overcoming that division and expanding the neoliberal world system to every corner of the globe, and is now attempting to expand its territory even into outer space and virtual space.
Fortunately, just as humans possess autoimmune cells, the wisdom of human history, namely philosophical discourse, already contains ample alternatives for this era, waiting for our exploration and study.
Since it is clear that the problems facing humanity and the planet we live on today are caused by humanity, it is also self-evident that the solution to those problems lies within humanity itself.
The answer to a problem is bound to lie within the problem itself.
This is not an extension of the anthropocentrism that says, "Humans are still the main problem solvers," but rather, it means that the current problems can only be solved through human reform, transformation, and innovation.
In these times, human life (survival) and the continuation of the ecosystem have become impossible without maintaining the sustainability of the entire Earth, that is, through Earth conservation.
『Earthly Life, Asking Philosophy for the Way』 is a book that seeks out the ideas of Earthly Life, and through them the path to life, living, and ecology of the community that lives together within it, through the philosophical thoughts of philosophers from ancient times to the present, with this sense of problem awareness and vision for the future.
In short, it is to reconstruct, reinterpret, and re-examine the history of world philosophy as a ‘history of ecological philosophy.’
We reclassify and re-examine the history of world philosophy, which has developed/been described in the direction of affirming, strengthening, and enforcing the uniqueness, independence, and absoluteness of human reason, from an ecological perspective.
(1) Plato's idea of ideals as an ideal world isolated from the real world (since its origins have been inherited throughout the history of Western philosophy since then) is the source of today's 'animal laboratories' that involve terrible animal abuse.
(2) Descartes' idea of 'automatic machines', one of the philosophical foundations that made today's civilized (material) world possible, is the philosophical foundation that made possible, for example, Auschwitz as a semi-automatic killing factory in the early modern era and today's factory-style livestock farming.
In that sense, Descartes' philosophy is also the opening of the gates of hell, in other words, the world that reduces animals to inanimate 'commodities'.
(3) What about Leibniz’s ‘monad theory’?
It became the origin of 'individualism' and one of the starting points for today's 'anti-ecological, human (individual)-centered worldview and social (civilization) structure'.
Not only within human society, but also, for example, it has become possible to perceive animal individuals as separate from human individuals and objectify them.
This has led to a way of life that dismantles the ecosystem as a whole, humans as parts of it, and mechanically reassembles them.
And that is what is driving us, humanity and the entire planet, to the brink of extinction today.
In this way, (4) based on “Peter Singer’s Utilitarianism,” looking at the horizon of “the idea that animal liberation is human liberation,” (5) reactivating, recycling, and recreating “the primordial vitality within humans” in “Deleuze-Guattari’s Restoration of the Wildness of Desire,” (6) acknowledging “the human potential newly discovered, revealed, and exerted while resonating with life and nature” through “Guattari’s Ecosophie and Radical Ecology,” (7) rediscovering “the status of ecological thought and movement as a social transformation movement” through “Murray Bookchin’s Anti-Capitalism and Social Ecology,” (8) redefining “the comradely thought that complements radical ecology and opens a new world together” in “Kant’s Transcendental Synthetic Proposition and Environmental Management,” (9) discovering “modern civilization as an apartment space like a factory-style chicken coop with no room or margin” from “Hobbes’s Theory of Objects and Apartment Civilization” and Taking a fresh look at alternative societies, (10) In “Virilio’s War Machine and Automobile Civilization,” exploring “the way in which the civilization of speed and efficiency are eating away at our lives and livelihoods,” and refocusing on the alternative civilization of slowness and margins, (11) In “Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and TV Civilization,” discovering “the anti-life structure called the identification of human consciousness,” and denouncing “the structure that is being reproduced, expanded, and deepened today on social media including YouTube,” (12) In “Horkheimer’s Instrumental Reason and Carnivore Civilization,” planning the regeneration of the inherent nature of life as a rejection of the horrific “carnivore civilization based on factory farming or massive environmental destruction,” (13) In “Nietzsche’s Superman and Nuclear Energy,” seeking “a way to a world of life and peace by breaking away from the ‘nuclear energy civilization’ that has grown up relying on Nietzsche’s ‘superman’,” (14) In “Foucault’s Microphysics of Power and Fossil Energy,” “through the operation of biopolitics” (15) Dreaming of a ‘country of the sun and wind’ by “looking at the transition society after fossil energy” in “Reich’s Orgone and Renewable Energy” and “finding the place of sunlight (renewable) energy as an old future and a future energy system that conforms to the structure and principles of life”; (16) In “Freud’s Unconscious and the Climate Crisis”, “facing the climate crisis as our own illegitimate child, we go down to the depths of our lives and consciousness, that is, the world of the unconscious, and redefine our existence and way of life”; (17) In “Marx’s Productivism and Growthism”, “recognizing that Marxism is also based on ‘productivism’ and breaking away from the myth of the future of development and growth” and choosing the path of maturity instead of growth; (18) In “Hegel’s Dialectics and Biodiversity”, breaking away from “the way of always assuming the unity of opposites and aiming for a new existence by subtracting individual existence” and realizing that the reality of life is based on diversity Becoming aware and moving forward on the path of coexistence, (19) In “Spinoza’s Pantheism and Ecological Conservation,” he philosophizes on “rediscovering the invisible but precious value of the ecosystem, the meaning of existence of all things that do not assert themselves but are extremely precious,” thereby reconnecting to the invisible network of the ecosystem and enjoying a “society of circulation and regeneration.”
A new world does not open up just with a new philosophy.
The new discoveries of philosophy, the new illumination of philosophy, are the work of weaving a net that will enable us to discover and not miss the new world that is already coming, as a life opportunity for our survival.
In the sense that we must not just savor the philosophy but live it, we ourselves must willingly become material and part of that net.
In this way, a new philosophy that promises a new world is born!
It is positive that this has served as an opportunity to realize that the disaster of ecosystem destruction is deepening beyond humans to the entire ecosystem and ultimately to the entire planet. However, by focusing our capabilities on solving the immediate tasks of preventing the spread of COVID-19, treating confirmed cases, and developing treatments and vaccines, we are increasingly moving away from the golden time to fundamentally and effectively deal with the climate crisis and the global crisis of mass extinction, which are approaching as bigger tsunamis.
COVID-19 has brought about a double awareness in humans in another sense.
One is that the greatness of human existence is sometimes so insignificant that the safety of all humanity is threatened by viruses that are 'questionably alive' and microscopic organisms that are difficult to see even with a microscope. The other is that our existence and life are interconnected, from these microscopic organisms to global catastrophes and climate crises.
This is a fact that was already widely discussed and familiar even before the advent of COVID-19, but COVID-19 has reaffirmed its truth and made it a point to be convinced again and again through experience.
It seems clear that 2020, the year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, will mark a new turning point in human history.
And at that turning point, it seems that the important axis is/should be to move in the direction of realizing the preciousness of life, ecology, and living not as an idea or theory, but as our lives, movements, and politics (laws or systems).
On the other hand, the trends of growthism/materialism/scientism since the modern era still have power and will continue to forge their own path by presenting their own vision… .
Just as the Renaissance led to the rediscovery of ancient (Greek) philosophy during the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era, the rediscovery of philosophy is equally crucial in the transition from the "before" to the "after" COVID-19 world.
A new world, a new life, a new being must be achieved through a thorough 'newness' not only of will but also of thought, conception, and custom.
As a movement at the level of a mere reform or campaign, such novelty would quickly be devoured by modern civilization, a gigantic gluttonous machine based on human instinctual desires.
This is also evident in the course of modern civilization, which has grown over the past several hundred years based on capitalism, materialism, and individualism.
Modern civilization, which was very recently divided into liberalism and socialism (communism), is overcoming that division and expanding the neoliberal world system to every corner of the globe, and is now attempting to expand its territory even into outer space and virtual space.
Fortunately, just as humans possess autoimmune cells, the wisdom of human history, namely philosophical discourse, already contains ample alternatives for this era, waiting for our exploration and study.
Since it is clear that the problems facing humanity and the planet we live on today are caused by humanity, it is also self-evident that the solution to those problems lies within humanity itself.
The answer to a problem is bound to lie within the problem itself.
This is not an extension of the anthropocentrism that says, "Humans are still the main problem solvers," but rather, it means that the current problems can only be solved through human reform, transformation, and innovation.
In these times, human life (survival) and the continuation of the ecosystem have become impossible without maintaining the sustainability of the entire Earth, that is, through Earth conservation.
『Earthly Life, Asking Philosophy for the Way』 is a book that seeks out the ideas of Earthly Life, and through them the path to life, living, and ecology of the community that lives together within it, through the philosophical thoughts of philosophers from ancient times to the present, with this sense of problem awareness and vision for the future.
In short, it is to reconstruct, reinterpret, and re-examine the history of world philosophy as a ‘history of ecological philosophy.’
We reclassify and re-examine the history of world philosophy, which has developed/been described in the direction of affirming, strengthening, and enforcing the uniqueness, independence, and absoluteness of human reason, from an ecological perspective.
(1) Plato's idea of ideals as an ideal world isolated from the real world (since its origins have been inherited throughout the history of Western philosophy since then) is the source of today's 'animal laboratories' that involve terrible animal abuse.
(2) Descartes' idea of 'automatic machines', one of the philosophical foundations that made today's civilized (material) world possible, is the philosophical foundation that made possible, for example, Auschwitz as a semi-automatic killing factory in the early modern era and today's factory-style livestock farming.
In that sense, Descartes' philosophy is also the opening of the gates of hell, in other words, the world that reduces animals to inanimate 'commodities'.
(3) What about Leibniz’s ‘monad theory’?
It became the origin of 'individualism' and one of the starting points for today's 'anti-ecological, human (individual)-centered worldview and social (civilization) structure'.
Not only within human society, but also, for example, it has become possible to perceive animal individuals as separate from human individuals and objectify them.
This has led to a way of life that dismantles the ecosystem as a whole, humans as parts of it, and mechanically reassembles them.
And that is what is driving us, humanity and the entire planet, to the brink of extinction today.
In this way, (4) based on “Peter Singer’s Utilitarianism,” looking at the horizon of “the idea that animal liberation is human liberation,” (5) reactivating, recycling, and recreating “the primordial vitality within humans” in “Deleuze-Guattari’s Restoration of the Wildness of Desire,” (6) acknowledging “the human potential newly discovered, revealed, and exerted while resonating with life and nature” through “Guattari’s Ecosophie and Radical Ecology,” (7) rediscovering “the status of ecological thought and movement as a social transformation movement” through “Murray Bookchin’s Anti-Capitalism and Social Ecology,” (8) redefining “the comradely thought that complements radical ecology and opens a new world together” in “Kant’s Transcendental Synthetic Proposition and Environmental Management,” (9) discovering “modern civilization as an apartment space like a factory-style chicken coop with no room or margin” from “Hobbes’s Theory of Objects and Apartment Civilization” and Taking a fresh look at alternative societies, (10) In “Virilio’s War Machine and Automobile Civilization,” exploring “the way in which the civilization of speed and efficiency are eating away at our lives and livelihoods,” and refocusing on the alternative civilization of slowness and margins, (11) In “Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and TV Civilization,” discovering “the anti-life structure called the identification of human consciousness,” and denouncing “the structure that is being reproduced, expanded, and deepened today on social media including YouTube,” (12) In “Horkheimer’s Instrumental Reason and Carnivore Civilization,” planning the regeneration of the inherent nature of life as a rejection of the horrific “carnivore civilization based on factory farming or massive environmental destruction,” (13) In “Nietzsche’s Superman and Nuclear Energy,” seeking “a way to a world of life and peace by breaking away from the ‘nuclear energy civilization’ that has grown up relying on Nietzsche’s ‘superman’,” (14) In “Foucault’s Microphysics of Power and Fossil Energy,” “through the operation of biopolitics” (15) Dreaming of a ‘country of the sun and wind’ by “looking at the transition society after fossil energy” in “Reich’s Orgone and Renewable Energy” and “finding the place of sunlight (renewable) energy as an old future and a future energy system that conforms to the structure and principles of life”; (16) In “Freud’s Unconscious and the Climate Crisis”, “facing the climate crisis as our own illegitimate child, we go down to the depths of our lives and consciousness, that is, the world of the unconscious, and redefine our existence and way of life”; (17) In “Marx’s Productivism and Growthism”, “recognizing that Marxism is also based on ‘productivism’ and breaking away from the myth of the future of development and growth” and choosing the path of maturity instead of growth; (18) In “Hegel’s Dialectics and Biodiversity”, breaking away from “the way of always assuming the unity of opposites and aiming for a new existence by subtracting individual existence” and realizing that the reality of life is based on diversity Becoming aware and moving forward on the path of coexistence, (19) In “Spinoza’s Pantheism and Ecological Conservation,” he philosophizes on “rediscovering the invisible but precious value of the ecosystem, the meaning of existence of all things that do not assert themselves but are extremely precious,” thereby reconnecting to the invisible network of the ecosystem and enjoying a “society of circulation and regeneration.”
A new world does not open up just with a new philosophy.
The new discoveries of philosophy, the new illumination of philosophy, are the work of weaving a net that will enable us to discover and not miss the new world that is already coming, as a life opportunity for our survival.
In the sense that we must not just savor the philosophy but live it, we ourselves must willingly become material and part of that net.
In this way, a new philosophy that promises a new world is born!
GOODS SPECIFICS
- Date of issue: January 5, 2021
- Page count, weight, size: 416 pages | 610g | 152*225*20mm
- ISBN13: 9791166290107
- ISBN10: 1166290107
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