Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Levinas and Ecological Ethics

Introduction

The work of Levinas provides a unique perspective in philosophy. Where Western philosophy has a history of pushing the limits of knowledge as far as possible, he questions whether the quest for knowledge is a just one, whether it is ethically appropriate, and questions the assumed freedom which allows us to continue it. Self-criticism, the project of theory and hence of knowledge, “can be understood as a discovery of one’s weakness or a discovery of one’s unworthiness – either as a consciousness of failure or as a consciousness of guilt” (Levinas, 1969, 83). The Western tradition has always assumed the former, and as such has consistently failed to ask itself if it is justified in continuing its search, or whether its failure is reflective of its own essential inadequacy in the face of that which it seeks to know. This is precisely the question which Levinas asks.

For Levinas the human condition is constituted by both separation (the inner life), and a relation with the Other (the infinite, exteriority). It is in this latter relation that ethics appears; in it the Other cannot simply be reduced to the same, reduced to an object for knowledge and therefore possessed by the knower. The interruption by the Other puts my own freedom into question as Levinas puts the question to Western philosophy. I come face to face with the Other, as he puts it, and through my own inadequacy I feel guilt and unworthiness. Part of this guilt is a feeling of responsibility for all suffering of the Other.

One of the major ethical issues facing the world today is the treatment of other species and our common habitat, the environment. Given that Levinas believes ethics to be primary in philosophy, one might have some hope that an analysis of his work can contribute to this problem. However Levinas’ position is so unique, so far outside of traditional ethics, that it has always been difficult to place him in conversation with it, to allow him to contribute to concrete ethics issues. Hutchens goes so far as to say that “the agenda of normative ethics ... is not something to which Levinasian ethics can make any contribution.” (2004, 35)

Yet some writers do still believe that Levinas can contribute through this notion of responsibility. I have a responsibility to the Other, but who is the Other exactly? Does it have to be a fellow human being, or can an animal or even, in some way, the environment be considered an Other to which we are responsible? We will look closely at three accounts which explore this possibility, and attempt to respond, with evidence from Levinas’ work itself, and show why the approaches they take may not be fruitful ones to follow.

The Arguments

Firstly we look at Diehm’s essay ‘Natural Disasters’ (2003). Here he claims that the Other provokes a reaction in me because I see in him a visible vulnerability and more importantly, a suffering. “I do not witness the other’s suffering without being moved” (2003, 175). It is this witnessing which opens up the ethical, though Diehm is quick to point out that “it is not the case that ethics arises only at the sight of blood” (2003, 177), rather that the possibility for suffering is enough to cause the commencement of ethics, and this is “a possibility that inheres in the flesh of every body.” (2003, 177)

As a result, the key question to ask ourselves here is who suffers, “the question of who the other is is not Who speaks? But Who suffers?” (2003, 178) In an investigation of what entities can count as Other, we must ask which entities are capable of suffering. This does not mean only those entities capable of feeling pain, it is a broader term which is not limited by the psychological capabilities of the entity (2003, 176).

Diehm asks this question, who suffers? He finds his answer in the work of Hans Jonas. All organisms have a form of exchange with the environment, they take things which they need, and reject things they do not. In this way they create a border around themselves, and thus have an interiority and an exteriority. Following this line of thought leaves us with organisms which have needs that can be obstructed or interrupted. Any given organism is set up as a site of freedom which I recognise as not mine to interfere with. It seems possible then that all organisms are Other to myself, and I am responsible to each.

Additionally, Diehm cautions “against reducing the face to a face” (2003, 172), reducing alterity to difference, something objectified and thematised. This would reduce it to knowledge, and hence the same. This leads to a principle of inclusion rather than exclusion, placing the burden of proof on those who wish to exclude any organism from counting as Other. Diehm sees evidence for Levinas’ own agreement with this in the infamous interview during which he is asked directly whether animals can have a face, and to which he responds entirely ambiguously, “I don’t know if a snake has a face. I can’t answer that question.” (Bernasconi and Wood, 1988, 172)

Secondly, we will be looking at Calarco’s essay ‘Faced by animals’ (in Atterton and Calarco, 2009 ). One intriguing line he follows here is to argue that animals can in fact be Is, that is, they are capable of ethical responses to the presence of others. To this end he highlights the phenomenon of altruism in the animal kingdom, of which there are many examples. A number of plausible explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed, at the levels of species, group or even genetic preservation. However, Calarco does not wish to provide an explanation that ‘raises’ animal altruism to the level of human ethics. Instead he believes that human ethics is no more than another example of animal altruism. “That human beings engage in acts of radical altruism is no more of a “miracle” or a rupture in the order of being than when animals do the same thing” (2009). In addition to other explanations such as selfish genes (and these are presumed to apply to humans as much as they do animals), Calarco believes there is room for a cognitive explanation in Levinasian terms (this too will apply to animals as much as it does to humans).

Satisfied on this point, Calarco moves on to our primary question, whether animals can be seen as Other, whether animals can have a face. He defines the face as “an expressivity and vulnerability that calls my thought and egoism into question and that demands an alternative mode of relation.” (2009). He acknowledges that Levinas explicitly says the Other must be human when he says that “the absolutely foreign can only be man” (Levinas, 1969, 73), but points out that “the Other cannot belong to any genus whatsoever, not even one as broad as ‘humanity’” (2009). In a similar manner to Diehm, he cites the interview with Levinas where he is so ambiguous as evidence that it is difficult, or indeed impossible, to set a limit to who can count as Other. “By what right can we delimit who the Other is in advance of such encounters? Should we not, then, take Levinas literally when he says “I cannot say at what moment you have the right to be called ‘face’”?” (2009). Levinas is incapable of saying whether animals have faces, not because he is unsure of whether they count, but because he has no authority to arbitrarily limit the Other.

Calarco claims that there are three aspects to ethical encounters: “(a) the ways in which my egoism might be interrupted, (b) the kinds of entities who might call me into question, and (c) the manner in which such interruptions might transform me” (2009). Clearly it is (b) with which we are most concerned here, and Calarco states his assumption “that most readers of Levinas who are somewhat sympathetic to his project would be generous in allowing for alternative modes of interruption (the first point) and transformation (the third point)” (2009). He obviously believes that this second point too cannot be limited and so is also flexible. Considering his earlier point that we have no right to delimit the Other, this leads to the conclusion that literally everyone and everything can potentially be Other to us. Calarco is happy to accept this outcome, saying that “we are obliged to proceed from the possibility that anything might take on a face. And we are further obliged to hold this possibility permanently open” (2009). One could question why he has only focused on the possibility of animals taking on a face. His answer lies in understanding his project and purpose. He begins with an intention to question the common neglect by philosophy to address the issue of animals, and here specifically to question its potential place within the philosophy of Levinas.

Finally we will look at Casey’s essay ‘Taking a glance at the environment’ (2003). As we have just seen, Calarco thinks that it is possible to see anything as Other, and so perhaps there may be an opening within Levinas for an ethics of the environment. This is the task which Casey pursues, believing it possible to see the environment (or part of it) as Other, to see in the environment an equivalent to the face.

He believes “that the human glance, meagre as it seems to be, is indispensable for consequential ethical action” (2003, 188). The reason is that the glance provides a method of access to the other individual, a direct access which can offer information not only about appearance, but about the person behind the eyes, as it were. In Levinasian terms the glance is the precise way in which I witness and welcome the Other. Casey admits that Levinas himself played down the role of the glance in the welcoming of the Other. For Levinas the glance meant perception, and perception implied knowledge, a reduction of the Other to the same in representation. For this reason Levinas did not wish to talk about ‘looking’ upon the face or perceiving it – the relation with the face is rather always and directly ethical. It is a relation which precedes knowledge and so it must precede perception and the glance.

Casey recognises that he is in direct contradiction to Levinas on this point, but believes that Levinas’ own position is unsustainable, quoting Levinas referring to the ‘appearance’ of the face. His solution is in a Leibnizian term; apperception, meaning a subtle and pre-conscious perception, but a perception nonetheless. Leibniz’s own example here was of waves crashing on a shore – one could not hear (perceive) an individual wave, but the perception must be there, because with a great number of waves the effect is multiplied and the sound can be clearly heard (perceived). These subtle perceptions are pre-conscious and therefore precede full blown, objectifying perception, of which Levinas is rightly wary.

What appears then is the face, and so Casey needs to find an equivalent in the environment. After rejecting a number of weak propositions (e.g. analogising the world to a body), he finds the focal point of a place in a landscape, which will be composed of a layout and a surface. The most important aspect here is the surface – a flexible and visible means of expression. He also applies this analysis to humans. There is nothing obscure about encountering the face of a landscape, because the face of a human is simply an expressive surface too.

Through the glance I am able to apperceive in a surface something which is against the natural order of things, “I am witnessing disorder in the environment” (2003, 197). This apperception leads to me feeling an imperative to act upon this disorder, to restore whatever balance has been lost. Ethics is thus before anything is said, it is rather seen or witnessed. “Before anything is said ... there is the moment of ethical engagement” (2003, 203).

We have now examined three examples of the use of Levinasian ethics in an ecological setting, each with differing approaches, but sharing some major points which we may wish to investigate. It will be worthwhile to summarise some of these connections between the three essays before we proceed to ask what evidence there may be within Levinas’ work to support or contradict them.

One obvious link is the interview in which Levinas is asked directly about the possibility of animals having faces. His apparent uncertainty here is leaned on heavily by both Diehm and Calarco in their essays, and whilst Levinas is not asked about the environment specifically, and Casey does not use the interview, an interpretation of it along the lines of that put forward by Calarco could certainly be used to the benefit of Casey’s project. Their interpretation of this interview excerpt allows Diehm and Calarco to argue that the Other cannot be limited, thus forcing any would be opponents to their thesis to find justification for any limitation.

Another common aspect is perception. This is most explicitly discussed by Casey, as we have seen in his discussion of perception and apperception. Yet it is implicit in Diehm, when we “catch sight of” (2003, 177) the vulnerability and hence the possibility of suffering inherent in the flesh. Calarco’s position is less clear, but like Diehm he focuses very heavily on the face of the Other, through which I experience primarily his suffering. Here we encounter the final major link between the three, most clearly stated by Diehm, that the key feature of the Other is its suffering, or at least its potential to suffer.

Criticisms

In our response, we will be dealing with these major aspects and discovering that they are not entirely faithful to Levinas’ work itself. There are a number of criticisms to be made regarding various issues and mistakes made in the arguments, and we will take them each in turn, but it will be useful to begin with a broader statement of objection. The view taken by these authors shows a fundamental misinterpretation of the relation of the Other within Levinas’ philosophy.

We will of course discuss this relation in gradually greater detail, but immediately we can see much evidence against the interpretation of the ethical relation given by Calarco, Casey and Diehm. The relation as they see it is a feeling of responsibility initiated by the experience of suffering in another. For Casey I witness disorder, the analogue of suffering, in the environment, and this perception is sufficiently intense to provoke a strong feeling of an imperative to act. For Calarco and particularly for Diehm, I experience an animal as a site of actual or at least potential suffering and once again feel an imperative to act ethically toward this being. This experience of suffering itself is interpreted in the most literal, cognitive sense as an appearance, primarily visually, of an entity in pain or capable of pain. Our main objection will thus be against this account, as we show that according to Levinas himself the relation with the Other is one of metaphysical Desire, as a longing for something completely foreign, an absolute alterity (Levinas, 1969, 34). He is also clear about what this means exactly. The relation occurs thanks to the simple presence of the Other, not an appearance, a specific moment in time which presents me with a vision of suffering. Understood correctly, the other as Other, as infinity and metaphysical Desire, is always present in my life, is in fact constitutive of it. The distance, which cannot be traversed, between myself and the Other communicates to me the idea of infinity. Precisely because this distance cannot be traversed it is the cause of a hunger which cannot be satisfied, the cause of metaphysical Desire.

These concepts will be explained more thoroughly as we continue through our criticisms, for now it is enough to point out that the relation with the Other does not involve any perception, particularly of suffering, and also is not a feeling experienced by a subject, a label attached to it in the way we may say we currently feel guilty, happy or hungry. My relation to the Other is far more integral to who I am, and as we will show, the role of the Other cannot be taken on by just any entity.

In addressing these arguments in detail, we will first talk about Casey’s application of Levinas to environmental issues. Given that animals do have faces in the ordinary usage of the word, this application would seem the most difficult to pull off successfully. When we look closely at Casey’s argument, a pivotal point is the problem of perception. As we just stated, Casey gives it a central role, in opposition to Levinas himself, who played it down. There is ample evidence to support this, which shows how clearly and explicitly Levinas denied that access to the Other is gained in any way through perception. He states early on in Totality and Infinity that vision “is an adequation of the idea with the thing” (Levinas, 1969, 34). By this he means that vision, or perception, presumes that its representation of a thing, its idea of it, is an accurate reflection of the thing itself. In ordinary experience this is no problem, but in an experience of the Other, I am in relation with the infinite. The Other overflows all ideas I can have of him. To talk of accessing the Other through perception would be to do violence to the Other; “the metaphysical relation can not be properly speaking a representation, for the other would therein dissolve into the same” (Levinas, 1969, 38). Perception is in no way sufficient for a truly metaphysical relation with the Other.

Casey of course does acknowledge this, admitting that he is deviating from Levinas somewhat on this issue. He believes however, that Levinas cannot consistently deny perception any role, quoting Levinas talking about the ‘appearance’ of a face (Casey, 2003, 190). As we have seen, he proposes use of the term apperception as a pre-objectifying mode of perception, which allows visual access to the Other without the worry of reducing him to the same. By his use of this term he thinks that he has overcome the problems facing perception. On closer inspection though, it is difficult to have such confidence in his solution, as the pre-objectifying nature of apperception becomes problematic.

“Analogues to this situation abound: the practiced medical doctor knows by a mere glance what her patient is suffering from” (Casey, 2003, 198). A number of similar examples follow this one of the doctor. Aside from the bizarre phenomenon of the doctor who can diagnose illnesses without conducting tests, the problem with this and all of the other examples Casey provides is that they do not appear to be pre-objectifying. Casey specifically names examples of experts within their fields. Seemingly distracted by the speed with which experts can make decisions, he neglects to realise that experts are called such due to their extensive knowledge of their area, and that in a cognitive sense, expertise is believed to be an ability to process information in larger chunks due to knowledge of and familiarity with the appropriate data (Eysenck and Keane, 2005, 451). But these are not simply inaccurate examples of what Casey is referring to. He states that familiarity with an environment will allow a person to see at a glance that there is disorder. The implicit assumption here is that the person will know what the natural order is. It seems unclear how one might distinguish between a person’s feeling that it is not ‘right’ or ‘natural’ for a forest to be cut down from another person’s feeling that it is not ‘right’ or ‘natural’ for two members of the same sex to engage in an intimate relationship. Granted these are two extreme examples, but the difficulty remains, and only increases when less clear cut situations are considered. Leibniz’s apperceptions do not break through to consciousness without becoming full blown perceptions. The sounds of the waves may be made up of a great number of apperceptions, but all that I am aware of experiencing is the perception of waves hitting the shore. An apperception of a landscape cannot make itself known to me without becoming a perception and thus picking up along the way all the social and cultural baggage that unavoidably causes me to misrepresent the Other.

A final point with regard to Casey, which will be more easily discussed in relation to Calarco and Diehm, is the fact that he uses the notion of surfaces for the visible expressivity of suffering. He concludes that ethics is therefore seen before it is said. We have discussed the increased role of perception in Casey’s argument, but it is worth noting that it oppresses the role of language which is, and for good reason, key in Levinas’ own work.

Turning now to the application of Levinas to animal ethics found in Calarco and Diehm, it may be worth talking first about the attempt to argue that animals can respond ethically to other beings in the former’s essay. Levinas is abundantly clear that the I and the Other do not form a totalised system which can be viewed from the outside (e.g., Levinas, 1969, 35-6). I cannot talk about the Other as an I, to do so would be to try to retain power over him, because I would be assuming once again my own freedom to ascertain knowledge regarding an absolute alterity. In the same way, if Calarco wishes to show that the animal is Other, he cannot also show that it can respond ethically as I an. It is also important to remember that for Levinas the I is also singular, and hence the only ‘I’ which I am capable of talking about is my own. As we said in our main objection, the relation with the Other is one of Desire, an insatiable desire brought about because of this failure to reach the Other through knowledge and theory.

We can now return to the issue of suffering which we have touched on previously. All three essays that we are considering, and in particular Diehm’s, claim that suffering is the key factor in my experience of the Other, and as such is the reason the Other can interrupt my separated life. There is no doubt that I feel a responsibility for the Other’s suffering, to whatever extent there is any, but this is not truly the cause of his interruption in my life. Levinas tells us that the Other interrupts my separated life by provoking or initiating Desire, an insatiable desire for the Desirable – the Other himself, or the Infinite. “The separated being is satisfied, autonomous, and nonetheless searches after the other with a search that is not incited by the lack proper to need nor by the memory of a lost good” (Levinas, 1969, 62). Here he contrasts Desire with need, which proceeds from the subject. If I have a need, it is because I am lacking something and thus require whatever would fulfil this lack. Desire is different in that it does not start with the subject, which has no needs. Rather it comes from, is aroused by, the desirable object itself. Desire is a longing for the Other or the Infinite, but it is “the Desire for the Infinite which the desirable arouses rather than satisfies” (Levinas, 1969, 50). I receive from the Other the idea of infinity (Levinas, 1969, 51), and it is only by virtue of having this idea that my Desire is sparked. We will say more on the interruption of the Other shortly, but it is already clear that he has a much more important role to play than arousing my feelings of responsibility through his suffering.

Calarco and Diehm both use as evidence the interview with Levinas which we have quoted earlier (1988). He is asked directly whether animals have faces, and he answers apparently quite ambiguously. Both of these authors rely heavily on their interpretations of these short excerpts. Levinas does not explain his answers in any detail, and it seems just as plausible that he finds the question itself awkward and perhaps inappropriate to his philosophy. The best that can really be said regarding the ambiguity of his answer is that I have no power to say what is and what is not Other, leaving open the possibility that an animal could be experienced as Other. Equally though this approach denies us the opportunity to say that animals definitely do count, and are experienced as Other.

John Llewelyn addresses this same issue in his essay ‘Toward a more democratic ecological order with Levinas’, in which he attempts to find positive ways to use Levinas’ philosophy in relation to ecological ethics. He says that to limit the Other to a specific species would be no more than an attempt to retain power for ourselves, but despite this, I cannot demand anything of other people, being as they are Other to me. Rather than a conclusion similar to Calarco, Diehm and Casey, whereby we end up with an ethical obligation toward animals or environments, he ends up saying that the most that I can do is to “ask others to ask this of themselves” (2009). The attempt to force an obligation onto all those who would consider themselves an I is itself an attempt to wield power over other humans, demanding that they respond in an ethical manner to animals. Levinas himself rules out the possibility of making any demands of the Other; “what I permit myself to demand of myself is not comparable with what I have the right to demand of the Other” (Levinas, 1969, 53). The lack of a definite negative answer by Levinas in the interview makes perfect sense, and should not be mistaken for an opportunity to answer in the positive – the question is inappropriate because the Other is not something I have control over. As we noted at the beginning of the criticisms, I am always already in a relation of metaphysical Desire with the Other, and so could never have any say in what or who the Other is.

We saw when analysing Calarco’s essay that he sees three aspects to ethical encounters: ways of interruption, entities that can interrupt, and ways the encounter transforms me. He assumed that the first and last aspects were flexible, and proceeded to argue that the second was also. However the flexibility of the second aspect relies on the flexibility of the first. If there are only limited way(s) of interruption, this may indirectly limit the kinds of entities which are capable of interrupting. Calarco clearly assumes that there are various modes of interrupting, and Diehm appears to believe that it is primarily if not entirely through suffering. Levinas makes clear though that there is only one way in which the Other interrupts me, one way in which I can be in a relation to him – discourse. “The relation between the same and the other, metaphysics, is primordially enacted as conversation” (Levinas, 1969, 39). Discourse is “an original relation with exterior being” (Levinas, 1969, 66), it is the only way this relation can be formed. The same and the Other do not form a totality, there is a distance between them, an infinite distance, and for the relation to be one with a genuine alterity, to avoid reducing the Other to the same, the mode of relation must be one which maintains this distance. Conversation, or discourse, “maintains the distance between me and the Other” (Levinas, 1969, 40), and is the only thing which can do so. In fact I can only have a relation with the Other because he attends his own speech, he “receives the possibility of questioning” (Levinas, 1969, 96).

Diehm picks up this argument in another essay, in which he claims that ethical ‘discourse’ is not to be understood too literally as verbal language, as words. It is primarily an expression, again primarily of suffering. Discourse is “the activity of call and response, plea cried and aid given” (2000). While it may be the case that discourse does not necessarily refer specifically to clear verbal expression, it is unwise to move too far in the other direction; the relation is still definitely one of discourse. It is certainly not the case, for instance, that the Other has no effect on me as long as he does not physically speak to me – my experience of the Other is always and immediately metaphysical Desire. But this is not to say that I will experience as Other an other which is actually incapable of speaking.

The interruption of the Other is still also more than a mere expression, especially more than only an expression of suffering, a plea for help. We have already noted and objected to the interpretation that suffering is the key factor in experience of the Other, but there is still more to be said here. All three essays we are considering here talk about the Other as a being in need of my assistance, weaker than me. Certainly Levinas tells us that we experience the Other as destitute, but Calarco, Diehm and Casey neglect the role of the Other as my master. “Justice consists in recognising in the Other my master” (Levinas, 1969, 72), I am completely powerless before him, I am a slave to him. He is described as being “not on the same plane as myself” (Levinas, 1969, 101).

Additionally, the Other is a teacher to me as student. The Other is responsible for so much that I require in my life as both separated and in relation with exteriority, but most importantly he teaches to me the idea of infinity, and is the only one who can do so; “the absolutely foreign alone can instruct us” (Levinas, 1969, 73). This provokes Desire, and is the initiation of my relation with him, “the first teaching of the teacher is his very presence as teacher” (Levinas, 1969, 100). While he may demand my time or my possessions for his own reasons, my experience is one of complete subordination and unworthiness. Levinas states that apology “belongs to the essence of conversation” (1969, 40). The Other, as infinite, exceeds my idea of him (Levinas, 1969, 50), presenting himself as beyond my reach. Finally, I rely on the Other, he holds significant power over me through his use of speech. In his discussion of the evil genius Levinas argues that what is so traumatic for us in this picture is the destruction of language through the refusal of the Other to attend his speech, to respond to questions.

In contrast to this picture, the three essays talk about the Other as poor and defenceless, requiring the power I hold to aid in his survival. This seems not to accurately reflect the entire Levinasian relation with the Other, where I give everything I have to the Other, not because I receive a plea for help, but because even that is not adequate to the power he holds over me, thanks to his distance from me. To write about the Other in the way these authors do betrays that they have not truly taken on board Levinas’ point. The picture painted by them is one in which I, as the same, am still very much the powerful entity in the relation, and perhaps this is inevitable in any discussion of ‘protecting’ the environment and the animals that reside within it.

These essays also appear to forget that Levinas is concerned with what precedes ontology – the Other offers the world in discourse, and it is only through discourse that we can share a common world. “The world is offered in the language of the Other” (Levinas, 1969, 92). The Other offers a world to me through his speech, and it is this which is the true way in which my world becomes gifts for him. I give my world to him in return, and we thus, through discourse, begin to share a common world (Levinas, 1969, 50). In fact, the Other only manifests himself to me by proposing a world (Levinas, 1969, 96). I only have a thematizable world in my separated life because the world has been given to me by the Other. “The objectivity of the object and its signification comes from language” (Levinas, 1969, 96), an object only has meaning because an ‘absolute alterity’ has proposed a world through speech. Meaning within the separated life alone makes no sense, speech must already be resounding for the separated I to live in a world of objects (Levinas, 1969, 97). The Other plays a drastically important role in the life of the separated I, far beyond making simple ethical demands in the way that he does in the essays of Casey, Calarco and Diehm.

This issue highlights another mistake, easily made when reading Levinas. He often sets out the process of interruption in a very linear narrative, as he does in Totality and Infinity, where the Other interrupts an oblivious, separated I. This method of exposition is misleading though, when Levinas is actually discussing a series of tensions within (and exterior to) the life of the I. As we have just seen, for the separated I to have a world in which to be oblivious, it must already be engaged in discourse with the Other. As such my relation with the Other is constitutive of my life, even in its moments of separation and self-involvement. The experience with the Other is not an occasional encounter inspiring a feeling of responsibility after which I return to a state of being separated.

Possible Ways Forward

The purpose of these criticisms has by no means been to attempt to show that the philosophy of Levinas has no contribution to make to ecological ethics. It does show, I believe, that a simple application of his system (if one can call it that) to encounters with animals and environments is not a productive goal. However, given that he does place ethics at the forefront of his philosophy, as constitutive of the human condition, along with his techniques for dealing with certain methodological issues, it would seem a shame to conclude that ecological ethics should simply ignore him completely. We will now consider some possible ways forward, positive steps that could still see Levinas contribute to this field.

One interesting idea contained within the essays we have already considered is Casey’s use of Leibnizian apperceptions. Casey’s version of the concept is fairly basic, but as we look more closely at Leibniz’s own discussion of it, we will see that it relates to the infinite in an intriguing way.

For Leibniz physical effects carry on indefinitely, and in this way “every individual created substance exerts physical action and passion on all the others” (Leibniz, 1989, 33). A physical effect emanating from one substance will continue on, diminishing as it goes but without ever being extinguished. Leibniz himself uses the analogy of a glass of water; “in a vessel filled with a liquid (and the whole universe is just such a vessel) motion made in the middle is propagated to the edges, although it is rendered more and more insensible, the more it recedes from its origin” (Leibniz, 1989, 33).

We apperceive these insensible effects and thus are in some sense connected to the entire physical universe. Leibniz also refers to apperceptions as ‘tiny perceptions’, and offers a very pertinent discussion of them in his ‘Preface to the new essays’.

“These tiny perceptions are therefore more effectual than one thinks. They make up this I-know-not-what, those flavours, those images of the sensory qualities, clear in the aggregate but confused in their parts; they make up those impressions the surrounding bodies make on us, which involve the infinite, and this connection that each being has with the rest of the universe. It can even be said that as a result of these tiny perceptions, the present is filled with the future and laden with the past, that everything conspires together (sympnoia panta, as Hippocrates said), and that eyes as piercing as those of God could read the whole sequence of the universe in the smallest of substances.”
(Leibniz, 1989, 296)

Of clear importance here is the infinite, which is involved because these tiny perceptions ensure that every effect is felt by every substance. If we combine this idea with the philosophy of Levinas, we find that we can posit a relation of the I to the infinite in every substance it encounters. This could potentially open up the Other to be completely inclusive as it becomes for Calarco. In my relation to any particular substance I am in some way in a relation with the infinite.

This is in no way a substitute for the use of apperceptions in Casey’s work. There the concept was used to sneak perception in through the back door. Our own line of thought would never lead to an ability to talk about ‘perceiving’ the Other or witnessing disorder/suffering. It thus emerges very differently to what Casey, Calarco and Diehm were trying to achieve. Additionally it does not address any concerns over the relation being one of discourse, or the role of the Other in offering me a world. This relation of discourse to the human Other will always be necessary, and as such no other substance, animal or inert, could be fully Other, but perhaps we can show how all substances participate in the infinite, and so I find myself in an ethical relation with them all.

There is also more to the work of Levinas than the relation between the I and the Other, and hence many more possible ways it could contribute to an ecological ethics. Llewelyn, for instance, shows how his methodology could help some forms of ecofeminism.

Llewelyn discusses variations of ecofeminism and their viewpoints. One of these, which he refers to as singularist ecofeminism, is characterised as “the ecofeminism for which this centralising of the universal is still a centralising of the masculine” (2009). What this variant of ecofeminism requires is “a feminist critique of universalism” (2009). There is thus an issue regarding how one might go about critiquing universalism without inadvertently subscribing to it. Working entirely outside of a system of universal principles is likely to simply alienate those currently within that system, precisely the audience ecofeminism is trying to reach and convert.

Llewelyn suggests that “eco-feminists could conduct their critique of androcentrism in a manner analogous to that in which Levinas conducts his phenomenology of ethical experience” (2009). What Levinas achieves in his philosophy is an analysis, through the use of classical logic, of classical logocentrism itself, in order to show how it is already deeply affected, at a fundamental level, by alterity, the Other, and ethics. In much the same way, ecofeminism could use masculine universalism “in order to bring out how the very heart of its apparently purely conceptual sameness is affected, touched, contaminated by the alterity not only of another human being but also of what is other than human” (2009).

Conclusion

Each of the essays under investigation, particularly Casey’s, admit that for their project to be successful one needs to go further than Levinas did in his own writings, to make some changes. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing, to use his ideas as a launching pad to new ones. Yet with close investigation it seems that one would need to go so much further that to even use him as a starting point at all is likely to be more of a hindrance than a help.

This is not at all to say, as Calarco comes close to at some points, that Levinas has anything against animals or the environment, or that he believes they are unworthy of an ethical, philosophical treatment. These topics were simply not his concern, he was philosophising on social relations between humans – an entirely understandable subject matter following his experience as a Jewish man living through the 1930s and 40s Europe. It seems at least mildly unfair to criticise someone in that situation for paying too much attention to the issues of inter-human ethics.

Even if some obstacles were overcome and the hard work was done on this project (if the obstacles are ones that have the potential to be overcome), an ecological ethics under this interpretation of Levinas would provide a solution which only worked on the basis of individual encounters of suffering. There is ample evidence that issues in animal and (particularly) environmental ethics require a more fundamental and global change in attitude and approach that perhaps this solution is not best equipped to provide. Certainly Levinas’ work itself operates at this level, but the changes required to transform it into an ecological ethics would almost certainly remove this ability.

None of this denies that Levinas has a contribution to make to ecological ethics, but simply makes the case that forcing animals or landscapes into the role of the Other is inadvisable. At most, what could possibly be achieved is allowing other substances participation in the idea of infinity, as we explored through the use of Leibniz’s apperceptions. We also saw how Llewelyn believes Levinas has other contributions to make to ecological ethics by his methodology, without needing to find a place within Levinasian ethics itself for animals or the environment. These ideas both show that despite the failings of the essays considered earlier, there may be positive changes to be made to an ecological ethics as a result of reading Levinas.

References

Atterton, P. and Calarco, M. (eds.) (forthcoming 2009) Radicalizing Levinas. New York: State University of New York.

Bernasconi, R. and Wood, D. (1988) The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the other. London: Routledge.

Casey, E.S. (2003) ‘Taking a Glance at the Environment’. In Brown, C.S. and Toadvine, T. (ed.). New York: State University of New York.

Diehm, C. (2000) ‘Facing Nature – Levinas beyond the human’. Philosophy Today. April 1.

Diehm, C. (2003) ‘Natural Disasters’. In Brown, C.S. and Toadvine, T. (ed.). New York: State University of New York.

Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. (2005) Cognitive Psychology. Sussex: Psychology Press.

Hutchens, B.C. (2004) Levinas: A guide for the perplexed. London: Continuum.

Leibniz, G.W. (1989) Philosophical Essays. Ariew, R. and Garber, D. (ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett.

Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity. Lingis, A. (trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

The Social Contract and Nature

What use can legal concepts be in an ethics of the environment? In their 2007 book A Contract with the Earth, Gingrich and Maple argue in favour of less judicial involvement in environmental issues. The closest they come to an actual contract is a list of things we should agree to do to protect the environment. There are other uses of legal concepts in environmentalism, e.g. earth jurisprudence, free market environmentalism, but none have pushed the use of the legal contract. To do so could be intriguing – if successful it could show an obligation for people to act ethically toward nature. To this end we will consider the classical social contract theorists to see how they may be able to contribute.

We will start with Locke, whose social contract theory has certain limitations that will preclude him from contributing much; a discussion of these limitations will highlight what is useful in the remaining two theories. Secondly we will consider Rousseau, whose theory is far more promising but still has some problems which will lead us on to the final philosopher. Thirdly and lastly, we will see that the theory of Hobbes can overcome the issues associated with both Locke and Rousseau, and could actually provide a useful structure for thinking about nature in terms of a legal contract.

Firstly then, we look at Locke, who is to be considered the most liberal of the three thinkers, which one might guess could make him useful. Problematically though, his theory placed a huge emphasis on the importance of property. Copleston says that the “natural right to which Locke paid most attention was, however, the right of property” (1959, 129). This brings to our attention immediately one of the main issues we have with Locke; he considers property to be a natural right, even in the state of nature, and the purpose of setting up a society is to protect this right. To think in this way is not conducive to an ethical approach to nature, it only encourages the current trend of abusing the environment for our own ends. It is important to note that Locke uses property in a wide sense of the term, referring not only to material possessions but also one’s life and liberty (1988, 350), though of course it does still include the possession of land and objects, property in the more common use of the term. Additionally property is gained through labour (1988, 289), it cannot simply be amassed to whatever degree one likes by staking one’s claim to this and that, yet it is only in fact limited by what one “can make use of to any advantage of life” (1988, 290).

A second problem with Locke’s theory is that his contract is between the people and the sovereign itself. Hampton describes Locke’s theory as “the kind that explains the state’s justification by saying that people lend their power to political rulers on condition that it be used to satisfy certain of their most important needs” (1986, 256). If we are to consider nature as having a place within a social contract theory, it cannot be as a party to the contract itself. As Hobbes rightly points out, there is no possibility of contracting with beasts or gods (1996, 97), or any entity with which we cannot directly communicate. Without this ability we have no way of knowing whether the terms of the contract are accepted.

Locke then cannot contribute much to our task, but we will move forward more fully aware of what we require from an appropriate social contract theory. With this in mind let us turn to Rousseau’s. We can see firstly that he does not have the same problems as Locke’s theory. Although he does say that in the state of nature every man has a right to everything (1997, 54), this does not constitute a natural right to property, but simply a right for each man to do what is necessary for his own survival, and nothing more. As with Locke, possession is gained through the application of labour, it cannot be arbitrary (1997, 55). Most importantly though, this original right to everything is given up in the social contract. In a social setting “one respects not so much what is another’s as what is not one’s own” (1997, 55). Ownership is characterised by the exclusion of others, who have all given up their right to that land or that object in order that you may claim it, as you do for their possessions. This is linked to his idea that each man is bound by his share (and not simply to any advantage of life as in Locke); possession, as much as it secures one’s own property, excludes one from making claims on anything else. This notion could clearly be useful for an environmental ethics, suggesting that it is not appropriate for certain individuals or countries to use up land and resources at such a huge rate over and above what is actually necessary for their continued survival, even maintaining a respectable level of luxury.

Rousseau’s contract is also different to that of Locke, involving only the people within the social community. “These clauses [of the social contract], rightly understood, all come down to just one, namely the total alienation of each associate with all of his rights to the whole community” (1997, 50). Each man contracts with the community as a whole, and so this theory avoids any problems of trying to contract directly with nature, though this creates new issues for Rousseau, which we will come back to shortly.

One of the more promising aspects of Rousseau’s theory is that of state ownership. In his society there is dual ownership of everything, that of the individual and that of the state. Whilst the state will not generally interfere with an individual’s possessions, its ownership is “incomparably greater” (1997, 54). Property is under the protection of the state and therefore can be used to its advantage. In relation to nature we might say that we can enjoy the benefits of the earth, and consider ourselves to be the owner of a small piece of it, but we must recognise that, under the protection of the earth, nature’s ownership is greater, and we must be ready to relinquish our possession for its benefit.

Additionally, Rousseau was also very aware of the importance of nature and its impact on the social contract. The society created by people must be appropriate to the land they inhabit (1997, 79). Limited resources do not pose a puzzle to be solved by human ingenuity and greed, rather they apply relative limits to the size and type of society which can and should be instituted. In a well crafted state the people and the laws will be in harmony with nature [1].

We will now consider then the limitations of Rousseau’s social contract theory with regard to our task. The primary issue here is that the contract is intended to be a historic event. A people literally needed to come together in its creation and provide unanimous agreement on its terms, in addition to meeting regularly to discuss matters of importance. In terms of a contract regarding nature, this has obviously never happened, and is unlikely to be practically possible in the future. Another aspect of the creation of the contract in Rousseau is the role of the lawgiver (1997, 68-9), a problematic portion of his theory in terms of a social contract due to the required seemingly inhuman abilities, and potentially even more so in a contract regarding nature. Part of the lawgiver’s job is also to convince the masses (through tricks rather than reason, something they are apparently incapable of) to do what they should reasonably be doing anyway. Our task here is to get people to realise an obligation toward nature, and this can only be done through their full understanding.

The social contract theory of Hobbes then can provide a much more acceptable solution. His view on property is similar to that of Rousseau, in that whilst every man has a right to everything in the state of nature (1996, 91), there is no actual property before the institution of a sovereign (1996, 90). His contract is different again to that of Rousseau. It again requires only men, but whilst Rousseau’s was a contract of each man with the community (an awkward concept that many, Hobbes included, would argue is impossible), Hobbes’ is a contract of “every man with every man” (1996, 120). In this way each man can contract with each other man to respect certain rights of nature, and the earth itself need not be party to the contract.

Hobbes’ discussion of rights and their transferral is also important. Every man originally has a right to everything, and so possession under a sovereign is not the gaining of a right to something. Each man lays down his rights in the social contract, in fact in any contract a right is laid down, either for the benefit of someone specific or for no man in particular (1996, 92). Rights to certain land and resources could be renounced without another person gaining them, therefore leaving them for the benefit of nature where necessary. Rights also “consisteth in liberty to do” (1996, 91), meaning that whenever a right to something is transferred via a contract, it is not only the right to possession but the right to use that is transferred. It would be an invalid contract if one were to sell a piece of land and subsequently fence it off to prevent the new owner from accessing it. A recognition of the simple right to exist and flourish for nature would then give it by right the means with which to achieve this, hence the protection of rivers, forests and wildlife etc necessary for its continued survival and growth.

I will also argue that Hobbes’ contract does not require an original and historical event to set it up, and that through his theory we can understand ourselves to be already in an obliging contract with one another regarding nature, and thus we must begin to act ethically toward it.

A major issue for recent discussions of Hobbes is how the commonwealth can be created from within his state of nature. Briefly, Hobbes describes the conflict brought about in the state of nature due to distrust between self-interested peoples. Contracts are thus meaningless with a power ready to enforce them, so how do we complete the social contract, a contract set up prior to the establishment of a sovereign? [2] Hampton sums the issue up in her influential book Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition when she says that “Hobbes’ account of conflict seems to generate sufficient strife to make the institution of the sovereign necessary, but too much strife to make that institution possible” (1986, 136). The problem is most often stated nowadays in terms of game theory. The interpretation of Hobbes’ state of nature is that it is a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, a situation in which it is in each individual’s interest to co-operate given reciprocal actions by other parties, but failing an actual guarantee of this reciprocation, it becomes preferable to defect. Hampton’s answer to this is that the state of nature in actually a coordination problem rather than a prisoner’s dilemma (1986, 136-8), a situation in which it is in each individual’s interest to co-operate regardless of what others do [3]. The solution to a coordination problem is a ‘self-interest agreement’ (1986, 139), which due to it being in each person’s interest to co-operate no matter what others do, does not require promising, and hence rules out the use of a contract (1986, 147). As far as Hampton is concerned Hobbes’ theory is not truly contractarian.

Another major figure in contemporary discussions of Hobbes, Gauthier, disagrees with Hampton here. He says that the “state of nature is not a true Prisoner’s Dilemma, but it presents itself as such a Dilemma, because of the subversion by the passions of what would otherwise be rational agreement on peace” (1988, 129). It may be in everyone’s best interest to co-operate, as it is in a prisoner’s dilemma, but this option “may be rationally inaccessible” (1988, 132), due to the unpredictable nature of passions. In this situation force (and hence a contract and sovereign) is necessary for the creation of a commonwealth (1988, 133). Whilst this may save Hobbes’ theory from being branded non-contractarian, we are still currently left with an apparent need for an actual historical event to set it up.

The solution to this problem is in Hobbes’ discussion of sovereignty by acquisition. In the case of conquest of one country by another, the defeated people may choose to exchange their obedience for their lives, thereby accepting the new sovereign in a social contract. Hampton sees this argument as nothing more than an unsatisfactory method of solving leadership selection (1986, 167), the only real problem faced by people in her coordination problem interpretation of the state of nature. She says that “given the prominence of the institution story in Leviathan, Hobbes clearly preferred the more peaceful election process as a way of creating the commonwealth” (1986, 172). However I believe that there is another explanation for its prominence and for the presence at all of the controversial acquisition argument.

Hobbes explicitly says that the contract in both the institution and acquisition stories is based on fear (1996, 138), in one case fear of other men, in the other fear of the conqueror, and that the subsequent rights of the sovereign are the same in both (1996, 139). He went to great lengths to point out that there is no difference between the two types of commonwealth. Hobbes was concerned primarily with the legitimacy of political authority, and “many people, including thinkers such as Hume, believed that most states had originated by force and that to talk of consent was mere wishful thinking” (Shelton, 1992, 209). Hobbes wanted to show that even in a state which had originated by force there was still consent and so political authority was still legitimate. In his book Hobbes and Leviathan, Newey states the point quite clearly,

“What matters if subjects’ obedience to the authority is to be justified is, first, that it serves the end of protecting them and, second, that they agree to it, whether this agreement is thought of as having been given in advance or retrospectively. The agreement is real, even though it may be couched in hypothetical terms. The hypothesis is that we as subjects are bound as if we really had met and exchanged contracts.” (2008, 121)

No actual historical signing of a contract is required. By benefitting from the protection of the sovereign we are already in a social contract to which we are consenting, even if, as in a sovereign by acquisition, the only alternative is death. But what about the prominence of the institution story pointed out by Hampton? Ideally people would like to think they had sat down and agreed with each other about placing themselves under sovereign rule, but in reality of course they did not. Hobbes focuses on the story ‘as if they had’, and shows that had they done so, they would have chosen the same situation they find themselves in already. Given this line of argument, it is reasonable to accept the current situation and consider themselves obliged to obey the sovereign. Not being present at an actual contract signing is not sufficient reason to dismiss the current political rule.

So in what way can this picture of Hobbes contribute to a contract regarding nature? Humans are benefitting, and have been doing so for the entire life of the species, from the protection and the resources the earth has to offer. Just as the man in Hobbes benefits from the sovereign rule and as such is subject to it, we must consider ourselves subject to the demands of nature. We are thus duty bound to lend our assistance to its interests, even if it interferes with our own. As with a state which originated by force, we have no choice (besides death) other than to accept this situation. What Hobbes can show however is that this fact does not invalidate the contract we each have with each other, and certainly does not mean that we would not be wise to choose this situation even in the event that there were other options open to us.

Hobbes recognises more than either of the other thinkers we have considered that to be in a position to philosophise about the social contract, we unavoidably need to already be in a fairly advanced society. Even his acquisition argument sounds like it involves an explicit original agreement, as he tells the story at the time of conquest of one people by another. Yet his real concern is the legitimacy of political authority now, when we find ourselves already under sovereign rule. The true task of a contractarian political philosophy is to make this authority legitimate as if we had actually contracted with each other. We are thus already in a contractual relationship, not with nature, but with each other. The terms of the contract state that we will benefit from what nature offers, and in return we surrender any power we do hold to protect our own ‘state’ from destructive forces both without and within.

Footnotes

1 In a good state “what is appropriate is so well attended to that natural relations and the laws always agree on the same points” (1997, 79-80).

2 A frequently given answer has been to say that the social contract sets up the power which will enforce it in one move (e.g. Copleston, 1959, 40). However it is a commonly held view now that Hobbes’ contract proceeds in two stages (e.g. Hampton, 1986, 136), the first to agree to the alienation of rights and the second to establish an actual sovereign to personate the people. The problem therefore remains.

3 Hampton’s claim here is that in the state of nature the slightly weaker individuals (given that Hobbes posits only a rough equality of people, such that no individual can triumph alone) will find themselves in a better position if they place themselves in the service (and under the protection) of stronger individuals. As more people discover this, even strong individuals will find themselves weak in comparison to the growing confederacies they are competing with, and as such will also join up with one.

References

Copleston, F. (1959) A History of Philosophy Vol 5: British Philosophy. London: Continuum.

Gauthier, D. (1988) ‘Hobbes’s Social Contract’. In Rogers, G.A.J. and Ryan, A. Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gingrich, N. & Maple, T. (2007) A Contract with the Earth. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hampton, J. (1986) Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hobbes, T. (1996) Leviathan. Tuck, R. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Locke, J. (1988) Two Treatises of Government. Laslett, P. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Newey, G. (2008) Hobbes and Leviathan. Oxon: Routledge.

Rousseau, J.J. (1997) The Social Contract and other later political writings. Gourevitch, V. (ed., trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shelton, G. (1992) Morality and Sovereignty in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Descartes and Heidegger

Descartes

Today man is having to face up to the possibility that he is now acting on a global scale. His actions have global consequences; he may enact permanent change on the world, or at least enduring enough to be permanent on any time scale which matters to him. He is finding it difficult not only to devise a solution to the negative effects of his lifestyle, but even to fully accept the existence of the problem in the first place. The reason for this is that man no longer feels connected to nature, he no longer feels as though he is a part of it. A rift has opened up between the two, but perhaps this is not a new phenomenon. The gap is actually rooted in a philosophical tradition dating back at least to Descartes. He is often accused of being responsible for separating man from nature; this aspect certainly seems to be present in his most famous work, the Meditations. Perhaps we can analyse this and in doing so, discover also whether he can be considered responsible for its beginnings.

The gap appears to emerge in six ways throughout the Meditations; considering each one will show to what extent it is integral to Descartes’ philosophy and also hopefully give some indication whether he is originally responsible or whether he is part of an existing tradition which has sought, for one reason or another, to separate man and nature.

Firstly he brings certain presuppositions to the table which his method of doubt fails to sweep aside. Some of these will become apparent later on, for now we can point out that he assumes a view of nature that is completely mechanistic. This may not be as clear in the Meditations as it is in some of his other works, simply because it is an unrecognised presupposition, and he believes he has doubted everything. His assumptions regarding nature then go unquestioned. This view of nature is also not unique to Descartes, and was becoming very popular in his time with thinkers such as Galileo and Bacon. This fact may suggest that Descartes himself is not at fault for the gap we are investigating.

Descartes does of course eventually secure for himself the existence of the external world in meditation six. He is convinced by his theological ruminations that God would not deceive him on this matter. The world is thereby guaranteed to be, on a general level, exactly how it seems to him, and it seems to Descartes to be mechanistic, full of objects with purposes and physical laws. He sees nothing of mind in the outside world, it is solely inert matter, leaving no space for consciousness in the physical world, and it is for this reason that he can remove via his method of doubt the entire material world and yet retain his own being, unaffected.

Descartes’ worries regarding his belief-set [1] resulted in the formulation of his method of doubt, and here again the gap is visible. The method involves withholding his assent from everything which is the least bit open to doubt. His first and primary victim here is the senses and all information received through them. Their source as external is questionable and so they must be discounted as inadequate. He posits an evil power that “has employed all his energies in order to deceive me” (Descartes, 1996, 15). The senses are not to be trusted; they could be under the control of a deceiving power [2].

The external world is now to be treated as suspicious. Even after its legitimacy is it never quite recovers to a point beyond this cautious suspicion. We will never again feel comfortable allowing ourselves to become fully immersed in our worlds and experiences. It is also misleading when he describes ‘demolishing’ his belief-set (Descartes, 1996, 12); this is not his aim at all. His intention is to find a foundation or justification for it, so his process involves parenthesising the world, placing it to one side until he is informed enough to make a judgement on it. Nature is put on trial and, even though it is eventually acquitted, the accusation is enough to label it as doubtful. Its value and meaning to us are changed as a result of the method.

Another presupposition which Descartes retains despite this methodical doubt is that which results from his mathematical background. He has a great respect for mathematics; its systematic nature and its level of certainty. This is clear from the first meditation as he moves through his arguments of doubt. The dreaming argument would be quite satisfactory if it weren’t for mathematics [3].

The introduction of doubt into the outside world also questions any science or discipline which refers to or makes use of it. Mathematics avoids this issue and so it becomes the final area of knowledge to fall before Descartes reaches the cogito. He finds it nearly impossible to bring any doubt into mathematics. This difficulty drives him to initially consider the possibility that God has deceived him regarding the facts of mathematics and geometry. He cannot conceive of any other way of doubting their truths – it requires the power of God, or an equally powerful evil demon as he eventually posits.

Truth itself and his project as a whole end up taking on a mathematical character for Descartes. His search becomes one for an axiom, a simple and unitary single truth which can act as a foundation, as his Archimedean point by which he can begin to recover his belief set [4]. This point must be certain, immune from any doubt, as the initial state of a mathematical problem must be known. This axiom appears as the cogito, a simple formula for his existence, and for truth.

More importantly when we consider truth, it becomes through Descartes’ method subjective. Its place is within the subject, which acts as the source of truth and the judge of a statement’s truth or falsehood. This is partially because of the method of doubt and its resulting suspicion of anything which is not already contained within the axiom of the cogito. There is also another reason however, which emerges when Descartes asks what it means for something to be true, coming up with his criterion of clarity and distinctness [5]. Immediately the subject becomes the judge presiding over the proceedings in the search for certainty. An item of knowledge can only be considered certain, not even through a subject’s line of reasoning, but only through his internal experience of its discovery. Knowledge is only certain whilst we experience a clear and distinct impression of its truth. The gap we are investigating is opening ever wider. Certainty is reached long before the question of nature is even asked again; its plays no role in truth.

This notion of truth is part of Descartes’ turn to subjectivity, but it is not the only part. In his lectures on Nietzsche, Heidegger notes that “since Descartes and through Descartes, man, the human ‘I’, has in a preeminent way come to be the ‘subject’ in metaphysics” (Heidegger, 1982, 96). The turn to subjectivity has not only changed elements like truth which Descartes brings to the subject, but it has also changed the concept of what a subject can be. Heidegger traces the word subject back, and points out that it used to refer to anything which is present before us, anything about which we can talk. With this concept of the word any aspect of nature can be referred to as a subject, an individual animal, tree, or a whole ecosystem. It is only since Descartes that this has changed, that subject has come to refer only to man, only to the res cogitans. The rest of the outside world can heretofore only be seen as objects, items to be grasped and known, to be mastered and dominated. The gap is widening again as we are now characterised as different kinds of entities to anything we encounter outside ourselves.

We can see the gap emerge again, though perhaps much more subtly, in meditation four. Here he is discussing the nature of error or sin and its relation to freedom. He claims that indifference is a defect in knowledge [6]; the ability to choose ‘freely’ between a number of choices merely reflects the fact that we are inadequately informed about the decision. True freedom is the knowledge of which choice is the right and the good one in any decision. If he always knew the correct choice, “although I should be wholly free, it would be impossible for me ever to be in a state of indifference.” (Descartes, 1996, 40)

If this is the case then freedom requires knowledge, and as such the external world, nature, as suspicious and prone to doubt, becomes a threat to our freedom unless we know it fully. Particularly when this is combined with Descartes’ view of truth as mathematical, it helps to turn nature into an object to be known. It in fact forces us to consider nature this way; we must require of nature that it be transparent to us, able to be known in a mathematical sense, measurable and calculable.

Error and sin stem from the fact that “the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect; but instead of restricting it within the same limits, I extend its use to matters which I do not understand” (Descartes, 1996, 40). When the will overshoots the intellect, we find ourselves making decisions arbitrarily, without a foundation of knowledge to inform those decisions. He decides that he can avoid error if only he remembers “to withhold judgement on any occasion when the truth of the matter is not clear” (Descartes, 1996, 43). His solution then is to stop the will extending past the intellect, to avoid making mistakes. However he neglects to mention, yet his project seems to advocate implicitly, the possibility of pushing the intellect to catch up with the will. Everything which we desire to or must make a decision on we must believe ourselves to be in a state of certain knowledge of, the alternative is a life of error and sin.

From the most subtle, yet possibly the most dangerous formulation of the gap to the most explicit, and traditionally perhaps the most important, which resides in Descartes’ substance dualism. “I do not see how God could be understood to be anything but a deceiver if the ideas were transmitted from a source other than corporeal things. It follows that corporeal things exist” (Descartes, 1996, 55). The external world is now allowed to return in meditation six, but it is present only with a considerable gap between it and ourselves, as we can see below, as Descartes now turns to his argument for mind and body existing as separate substances [7]. He separates his world into res cogitans (mind, the thinking, non-extended substance) and res extensa (the extended, non-thinking substance). This cements the gap that has been forming throughout his meditations, making it very real and very problematic. Man and nature have separate existences, creating a permanently unbridgeable gap between the two. They are fundamentally and essentially different entities. This is a very plain and explicit formulation of the gap we have seen emerging throughout the Meditations, and it is this which caused such a problem for subsequent philosophy. This being the case, if Descartes is found to be the cause of the divide, this formulation will likely be the primary reason why he has had that effect.

Yet we may find that Descartes is not the cause of the gap, and we have seen that the gap is nevertheless to be found elsewhere throughout his thought, at deeper and more subtle levels. Substance dualism, its historical consequences aside, is not the reason for or cause of the presence of the gap in Descartes himself.

Descartes and Heidegger

In his lectures on Nietzsche, Heidegger states that “through his many efforts to make what was new in his grounding of metaphysics intelligible to his contemporaries by responding to their doubts, Descartes was forced to discourse at the already prevailing level and so to explain his fundamental position superficially, that is, always inappropriately” (Heidegger, 1982, 118).

He means here that the language of substances used by Descartes is not necessary within his metaphysics, but is rather a result of needing to communicate with the scholastic tradition which was dominant at the time. He refers to this as “the most palpable example of earlier metaphysics impeding a new beginning for metaphysical thought” (Heidegger, 1982, 115).

According to Heidegger then, the notion of substances can be completely removed from Descartes’ thought and the rest of his ideas will still stand up. Speaking of the physical and the psychical as two distinct substances is to talk about it within a certain ‘language’, that of the scholastic tradition which preceded Descartes. Had there been a different tradition with which he had to contend, Descartes may well have used a different language to convey his ideas, and certainly would have been unlikely to include the notion of substance. It is important to note that this is not simply a case for Heidegger of hidden presuppositions deriving from the context in which Descartes’ thought was formulated, but in fact more of a conscious decision on the part of Descartes who, whilst aware of the unsatisfactory nature of scholastic terminology, was heavily restricted by the need to remain relevant and, as Heidegger states, “intelligible” to this tradition.

However, we have said that the separation of substances made the gap between subject and object real and problematic. Does Heidegger’s analysis, if it is correct, mean that we were mistaken? Obviously Descartes still had the same effect on subsequent philosophy, and it could be argued that even if Heidegger is right, clearly this was not noticed, and as such it makes no difference. On the contrary though, the effect which Descartes had on philosophy may not simply be because no-one realised that the language of substance was unnecessary, we’ve already seen that this is far from the only manifestation of the gap in his work.

Heidegger shows that the concept of res extensa “is the first resolute step through which modern machine technology, and along with it the modern world and modern mankind, become metaphysically possible for the first time” (Heidegger, 1982, 116). He sees a project which starts with Descartes and ends with Nietzsche, and claims that “he needs it [the Nietzschean over-man, the completion of the project] for the institution of absolute dominion over the earth” (Heidegger, 1982, 117). Descartes’ conception of nature as res extensa and mathematical, whether or not we take seriously the language of substance, is necessary as the first step to domination of it. This domination is prior to Descartes’ thought, the desire to control and hold power over nature is responsible for driving Descartes to conceive of it in a way which allows us to do so.

Again, in The Age of the World Picture, Heidegger discusses the nature of modern science as research. By research he means specifically the projection of a framework to which a subsequent experiment must adhere, and through which its results must be intelligible and interpretable (Heidegger, 1977). He says that “we first arrive at science as research when and only when truth has been transformed into the certainty of representation” (Heidegger, 1977, 127 – italics added).

This is discussed in greater depth and detail in The Question Concerning Technology, where Heidegger is questioning technology in order “to prepare a free relationship to it” (Heidegger, 1993, 252). This will only be possible by becoming aware of its essence, what it really is. The essence of something, he remarks, is not that thing itself. The essence of technology is not something technological; it is not a machine or tool itself.

What can this essence be then? Some have said that technology is a means to an end (or a human activity, which Heidegger says amounts to the same thing). This view leads to an attitude towards technology as a tool, something to be controlled and mastered. It would be difficult to argue that technology is not a means to an end, but it may not be only this. To believe that technology is nothing more than this is to be in ignorance of it, in ignorance of its essence, and therefore in ignorance of our relationship to it, and incapable of building a new relationship to it [8].

Following Aristotle, Heidegger identifies the four causes, or four ways of being responsible. Being responsible for something means to be responsible for bringing something forth, for unconcealing it or revealing it to the world. Technology is such a power that reveals; it is a certain way of revealing the world, in a manner in which modern technology can understand it. He points back to Aristotle’s discussion of episteme and techne in the Nicomachean Ethics. Each concerns knowledge and revealing, but they differ in terms of “what and how they reveal” (Heidegger, 1993, 255).

Modern technology reveals in a new way, it brings forth nature as standing-reserve. This means viewing nature as a stockpile of resources to be ordered when we wish, not just in the sense of raw materials, but anything, even for example an airliner. “Yet an airliner that stands on the runway is surely an object. Certainly. We can represent the machine so. But then it conceals itself as to what and how it is. Revealed, it stands on the taxi strip only as standing-reserve, inasmuch as it is ordered to insure the possibility of transportation” (Heidegger, 1993, 257).

The essence of technology then is enframing, “the gathering together of the setting-upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve” (Heidegger, 1993, 258), or the force which pushes man to reveal nature as standing-reserve.

It may be objected that modern technology is different, and that this analysis cannot apply. Modern technology is based on science as we now understand it, exact science on a mathematical basis [9]. This is symbolic of the traditional view that Descartes’ thought is responsible for a mathematical conception of nature. Modern technology, now that we understand its essence as enframing and not just machine technology, is actually prior to exact science and mechanical nature. This is because enframing “demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve ... that nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information” (Heidegger, 1993, 259). Hence it was this demand, that man, driven by modern technology (as enframing) to pursue dominance over nature, which led to the view of nature as mechanistic, as res extensa. We can now understand that the language of substance in Descartes is unimportant, or more accurately that it is unimportant whether it is unimportant. The overwhelming desire for control over nature, the need to impose order upon it, to remove its violence, came before Descartes, and simply found expression through his separation of man and nature, subject and object. For Heidegger, in The Question Concerning Technology, the problem with this is the danger of man becoming himself standing-reserve. We will see how he formulates this shortly, but the possibility of this danger may shed light on why Descartes created such a gap between man and nature; to avoid just this outcome [10]. Now we turn back to his later essay concerning technology, and discover how Heidegger feels that this is a danger. “As the one who is challenged forth in this way [by enframing], man stands within the essential realm of enframing. He can never take up a relationship to it only subsequently. Thus the question as to how we are to arrive at a relationship to the essence of technology, asked in this way, always comes too late” (Heidegger, 1993, 259). We always find ourselves already in a relationship with technology; we can never start outside and build one up from scratch. This is made even more difficult because it conceals other methods of revealing, shutting them out and denying them to us, and more importantly it conceals itself [11].

Because technology blinds us as to our relationship to it, we are in danger. As he states in the Nietzsche lectures, we reach a point where we must completely give in to technology, submit ourselves to it in order to gain the control we desire over nature (Heidegger, 1982, 116-7). Man is in danger of becoming standing-reserve himself, because he reveals the world in only one way [12].

As he stated at the beginning of the essay on technology, and as we can now understand for ourselves, we need to build a free relationship to technology. We have already taken the first step on this path by making ourselves aware of its essence and the relationship to it in which we currently find ourselves. This should allow other ways of revealing to return so that nature, and thus ourselves, will not be purely standing-reserve.

Heidegger himself points to the possibility of viewing art as one method of revealing [13]. The essence of technology is nothing technological, and if we take it to be such we will never build a free relationship to it. Art is a realm sufficiently different to technology that it is capable of reflection upon its essence. Yet equally the essence of art is not a work of art, so as we use this realm to reflect on technology, the essence of art itself becomes more ‘mysterious’. Thus we are faced with the question of the essence of art. By unceasingly questioning concerning (the essences of) things, we are opening up more and more the question of essences, and of Being in general, which has been forgotten.

Heidegger

“Metaphysics grounds an age, in that through a specific interpretation of what is and through a specific comprehension of truth it gives to that age the basis upon which it is essentially formed. This basis holds complete dominion over all the phenomena that distinguish the age.” (Heidegger, 1977, 115)

Any age is dominated by a certain metaphysics, and the modern age is dominated by the metaphysics of Descartes. It is he who sets the framework for recognising what we can mean by Being, what can thus be investigated by philosophy and what sort of results those investigations should return (i.e. what truth is). Descartes’ metaphysics, claims Heidegger, close off the question of Being in general (Heidegger, 1962, 125-7). For Descartes authentic substance (i.e. Being), requires no other entity in order to exist. In truth this can only apply to God, but within the world he created, the ens creatum, there are two substances which require no other; the res cogitans and the res extensa. God is infinite, and therefore infinitely different to the created world, yet somehow both are substances, both have Being. True Being in general then is whatever the two share, but Descartes claims this is a question without an answer that can be distinctly understood. Hence the question should not be asked; Descartes avoids the meaning of Being and closes off the question.

Subsequent philosophy then reasons that the question is an invalid one, and it is a mistake to attempt to ask it. Heidegger identifies three presuppositions regarding the meaning of Being (Heidegger, 1962, 22-3). Firstly, Being is seen as the most universal concept, but Heidegger is keen to point out that this is not in the sense of a class or genus. Secondly, Being is indefinable, because (as we saw with modern technology) the essence of Being cannot be something with Being itself, something which is an entity. Lastly Being is said to be self-evident, we use it constantly without encountering any real difficulties, without any understanding of its essence. For these reasons philosophy has dubbed Being “the most universal and the emptiest of concepts” (Heidegger, 1962, 21). For the exact same reasons, Heidegger argues that the question needs to be asked. Being is the most pervasive, most universal of concepts, and yet we have no ontological understanding of it, and he finds this worrying.

“Every inquiry is a seeking. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought” (Heidegger, 1962, 24). We must have some basis or starting point for the investigation into the meaning of Being, and so we require something which has a relationship to Being. Of course this could conceivably be anything that is, but at this point Heidegger chooses what he refers to as Dasein, a way of referring to man without the implications of terms like subject or self. Literally it means ‘being-there’, but he uses it to refer to an entity with a certain kind of Being. Importantly it is a kind for which its own Being is already an issue, meaning that “there is a way ... in which entities with the character of Dasein are related to the question of Being” (Heidegger, 1962, 28). As the third presupposition stated, we use the language of Being quite successfully already, and so there must be some underlying, pre-ontological understanding which we can take as a starting point.

The reason we are interested in Heidegger’s account in Being and Time is that he identifies Dasein as having a state of Being which he calls Being-in-the-world. This kind of Being has different aspects (Being/in/the world), yet it is a unitary phenomenon, Being-in-the-world is essential to Dasein’s Being, it cannot Be in any other way (Heidegger, 1962, 78). This discussion of Dasein as existing within a world is clearly pertinent to our interests, particularly as Heidegger goes on to compare it to Descartes’ ontology.

First we must determine what it is that Dasein is ‘in’, what the world is. Heidegger considers four things the term could refer to (Heidegger, 1962, 92-3). One is that it could simply refer to nature, but this is nothing more than a collection of entities. It could refer to the Being of a selection of entities; this is what he understands by people talking of the ‘world’ of a mathematician, for example. It can also designate ‘worldhood’, which is the structure of any kind of world, the Being of worlds if you will. It could also, and this is the sense in which Heidegger uses it, mean a place where Dasein resides, whether this is the public world or Dasein’s own world. This is still quite vague an explanation, but it will become clearer. It is a place though, that belongs to Dasein only, no other entities have a world of their own, they are within Dasein’s world (Heidegger, 1962, 93).

Now we can consider what it means for Dasein to be ‘in’ this world. Remember that Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein’s Being, it is not a property of it. Dasein is not in its world in the way that an object is in a container, as water is in a glass (Heidegger, 1962, 79). These are two spatial objects with certain locations, and this interpretation is plainly not appropriate for Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Heidegger notes that ‘in’ is derived from ‘innan’, which means ‘to reside’ or ‘to dwell alongside’ (Heidegger, 1962, 80). Hence Dasein ‘dwells alongside’ its world, rather than being spatially contained within it.

There is still much clarity to be gained, how does Dasein’s Being-in manifest? One issue here is that Dasein does not experience its Being-in as such, it is always already “dispersed ... into definite ways of Being-in” (Heidegger, 1962, 83). Dasein experiences its Being-in in concrete ways such as producing, discussing, considering. An entity in Dasein’s world is something with which it is concerned in some way (Heidegger, 1962, 83). Dasein is invested in the entities in its world, whether positively or negatively; it assigns value to these entities. For this reason, “an entity can ‘meet up with’ Dasein only in so far as it can, of its own accord show itself within a world” (Heidegger, 1962, 84). Dasein only experiences entities within its world as things about which it is concerned.

We can now see why it is inadequate to refer to the world as nature, the collection of all objects in the universe. For one thing this term does not cover all possible entities, rather it only contains reference to those with a physical existence. More importantly, our world consists of those things closest to us; this means not the objects spatially within our proximity, but those entities about which we are most concerned (Heidegger, 1962, 95).

Yet still we are unsure what it is exactly Dasein dwells alongside, what those entities are about which it is concerned. Heidegger terms them equipment (Heidegger, 1962, 97-9). Equipment is always something ‘in-order-to’, it is assigned to something – a job or purpose. In addition equipment always belongs to a totality of equipment, it never stands alone. This totality is always encountered first by Dasein, and from it individual pieces emerge as being useful for particular tasks. A piece of equipment is most genuinely encountered in its in-order-to, and this state is called its being ready-to-hand. He uses the example of a hammer, which is ready-to-hand as a tool for pushing nails into wood, among other things. Dasein’s most genuine encounter with the hammer is during the actual act of hammering in a nail. At this point the physical object of the hammer is invisible, Dasein pays no attention to it. What is actually concerning Dasein is the project or work being produced through the use of the hammer, this is known as the towards-which; any piece of equipment is an in-order-to, and it is used in order to complete a certain task, a towards-which.

Discovering things as ready-to-hand in this manner is the way in which the world allows encounters between Dasein and other entities (Heidegger, 1962, 114); this is the way Dasein interacts with its world. All entities within a world are ready-to-hand for something, the towards-which, but this towards-which is also an entity that is ready-to-hand, and hence it is for something else, it goes back to another towards-which. This situation regresses until the primary towards-which is reached, and this is not another entity that is ready-to-hand, but is called a for-the-sake-of. Any entity which involves the ready-to-hand as being for-the-sake-of itself has the kind of Being of Dasein (Heidegger, 1962, 116). Thus everything in Dasein’s world which it encounters is something that is ready-to-hand for it in some way, that it utilises in some way, and as such something about which it has concern. This is the only way Dasein can encounter its world, and more than that it is the way in which Dasein discovers, learns about the entities in its world.

As we noted earlier, the totality of equipment is discovered first, and individual equipment emerges out of this totality. An entity cannot be encountered as ready-to-hand without its context, without its totality being known beforehand. Therefore whenever Dasein encounters an entity, which it does so as ready-to-hand, that entity and its totality are already known to Dasein to some extent [14]. Dasein cannot encounter something with no previous knowledge of it or connection to it.

If we accept that Dasein can only encounter entities as ready-to-hand, we realise that this includes nature too. Work makes reference not only to tools such as the hammer, but also to materials. Some of these materials are not produced, they are naturally occurring; this is how Dasein discovers nature. “The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails’” (Heidegger, 1962, 100). This begins to sound like that situation Heidegger was lamenting in The Question Concerning Technology, in that nature becomes nothing but raw materials for human projects. However there is one vital difference – here nature is not held as mere standing-reserve waiting to be ordered as it was in that essay. We only encounter something with a specific purpose (ready-to-hand), hence we only encounter something when we have a need for it. Nature is not there to be stockpiled and counted without any definite purpose, without being ready-to-hand.

Something which is ready-to-hand may appear as unusable; the hammer may be broken. It this case it ceases to be invisible, it becomes extremely conspicuous and in all likelihood frustrating (Heidegger, 1962, 102-3). It shows itself now in unreadiness-to-hand. Its nature as a physical object suddenly comes to the fore as we see it has been damaged. We now encounter the hammer not as ready-to-hand, but as present-at-hand. Many entities which are ready-to-hand also have the kind of Being of something present-at-hand, their physicality (spatial location, physical properties etc), but normally this is not of concern to Dasein, and so it fades into the background. The broken hammer does not lose all sense of being ready-to-hand, but in being incapable of fulfilling its purpose it becomes much more noticeable as present-at-hand. When this happens, the totality of equipment of which it is a part becomes ‘lit up’ (Heidegger, 1962, 105-6). The work which was previously the concern of Dasein can no longer be progressed towards, the hammer’s state of being broken has, at least temporarily, frozen the activity, and the set of involvements and assignments become clear as frustrations because they can no longer be achieved. In this situation, “the world announces itself” (Heidegger, 1962, 105). Therefore if we wish to investigate the normal situation of Dasein in-the-world, this world cannot announce itself, because it only does so outside of normal circumstances – we must investigate Dasein’s encounters as ready-to-hand.

Having set out his position, he then clarifies it against the ontology of Descartes, providing us with clarity on his own concepts and a useful analysis of Descartes’ problems. For Descartes genuine access to the ‘world’ as res extensa can only be gained through knowledge, and as we have seen, only through knowledge of the mathematic variety. Something is known in mathematics if it constantly is, if it is constantly and predictably available to inquiry. Being as such is then determined to be constant presence-at-hand and nothing more (Heidegger, 1962, 129). We are already detached from this world if, with Heidegger, we take Dasein to have a different kind of Being, and one who can only encounter entities as ready-to-hand.

Heidegger refers to Descartes’ discussion of hardness, and points out that he describes two physical objects touching (Heidegger, 1962, 130). Touching can only be achieved by an entity with the kind of Being of Dasein, says Heidegger. Entities which do not have this kind of Being, whether they are ready-to-hand or present-at-hand or anything else, cannot ‘touch’ in this sense, it is merely a matter of spatial location and movement through space. Descartes has presupposed his ontology, identifying the world with Things, with nature as a set of physical objects. We’ve already seen Heidegger argue that this is inadequate and diminishes the world. Additionally we know from our own analysis of Descartes that this view of nature as pure physical objects prevents us from having any closeness to it.

Challenging himself, Heidegger asks whether we could consider res extensa as an entity being present-at-hand, and once given value and concern by Dasein, arrive at an entity which is now ready-to-hand (Heidegger, 1962, 132). This way the views of Descartes and Heidegger could be brought into agreement with each other. The problem is that this method is backwards – it starts from an entity as present-at-hand and tries to restore its Being as ready-to-hand on this basis. But, as Heidegger points out, you cannot restore the latter from the former without already having established the nature of the entity as ready-to-hand. He discusses much the same issue earlier, when he states that while it is only because of an object being present-at-hand that Dasein can encounter anything ready-to-hand, the latter is still ontologically prior (Heidegger, 1962, 101). For Dasein to perceive an entity as present-at-hand, as we saw with the broken hammer, its nature as ready-to-hand has to be peeled back or looked through, as it is always the way Dasein first encounters.

Similarly, he addresses the possibility that Dasein has two parts, one corporeal and one spiritual (Heidegger, 1962, 82), much like Descartes’ philosophy. This is dismissed for two reasons. Firstly it would simply open the question of the presence-at-hand of each part to the other, which is another way of wording the exact mind-body problem that has plagued Descartes’ dualism. Secondly, and just like Descartes ignoring the Being shared by both God and the ens creatum, it would ignore the fundamental Being they both share, and Heidegger would not be investigating Being at its most basic and universal.

He also dismisses any potential parallels between Descartes’ subject/object distinction and his own Dasein/world distinction [15]. Dasein has a world with entities which it encounters as ready-to-hand, not physical objects as res extensa. Descartes’ distinction also leads to him placing knowledge, as we have seen, ‘inside’ the subject, without further clarification. For Heidegger knowing is not inside Dasein and separated from the world, it is alongside the world, just as Dasein itself dwells alongside. There is thus no gap between Dasein and the world for knowledge to need to cross, and Descartes’ problems do not arise (Heidegger, 1962, 88). Knowledge is a state of Dasein’s Being (as it is in-the-world, or alongside it), rather than a property which it contains.

And so we return to the world and the entities within it. Descartes, to use Heidegger’s terminology, takes presence-at-hand to be res extensa’s genuine Being, he takes the world to be physical objects and no more. By presupposing this, he misses the fact that an entity as present-at-hand is an abstraction from its true Being. Things are most genuinely, are most genuinely encountered by Dasein, when they are ready-to-hand for it.

Conclusions

We began with the observation of a gap between man and nature, asking about its origins. As many do, we made a preliminary accusation against Descartes of being the founder of this problem, and set about determining whether it might be a legitimate accusation. In analysing his Meditations it was clear that the gap was present, and it was tied in with his most fundamental ideas and concepts.

However, through the insights made by Heidegger in his lectures on Nietzsche, we could see the underlying reason which had caused the gap in Descartes and in other thinkers of his time, as well as caused those ideas to catch on. This reason was the drive to dominate nature through modern technology. Our analysis led us to Heidegger’s essay on technology, which argued that modern technology is prior to exact science and views like those of Descartes. In addition, it shows that modern technology, far from simply being a collection of machines, is a point of view that forces nature to display itself to us in very definite and potentially harmful ways, as standing-reserve. Hence we can see a reason for the gap between man and nature; to consider them together would be to risk man himself becoming standing-reserve and nothing more.

Heidegger’s discussion here opened up the question of Being in general, which he addresses most comprehensively in Being and Time. This was a useful account for us to study, shedding more light on the philosophy of Descartes and the question of the gap. Most of all it emphasises the relationship between man and the world, the closeness of it and the essential nature being-in-the-world has for Dasein. Regardless of the specific details of the account, Heidegger convincingly argues that to abstract man out of his world as Descartes does is an immediate mistake; all ontology needs to begin with man as part of a world, not standing alone.


References

Descartes, R. (1996) Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Cottingham, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hamilton, C. (2003) Understanding Philosophy for AS Level: AQA. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes Ltd.

Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time. Trans. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and other essays. Trans. Lovitt, W. New York: Harper & Row.

Heidegger, M. (1982) Nietzsche. Ed. Krell, D.F. New York: Harper & Row.

Heidegger (1993) in Scharff, Robert C, and Dusek, Val. (2003) Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition – An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

[1] “Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realised that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.” (Descartes, 1996, 12)

[2] Hilary Putnam attacks the brain in a vat variation of this argument by pointing out that a brain in a vat stating ‘I am a brain in a vat’ still does not know that it is a brain in a vat (Putnam in Hamilton, 2003, 20). Putnam takes this to show that the argument is self-defeating, but it merely emphasises the gap that has been opened up between a consciousness and the world outside it – we may have true beliefs and still entirely lack knowledge.

[3] “So a reasonable conclusion from this [the dreaming argument] might be that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all other disciplines which depend on the study of composite things, are doubtful; while arithmetic, geometry and other subjects of this kind, which deal only with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they really exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any suspicion of being false.” (Descartes, 1996, 14)

[4] “Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakeable.” (Descartes, 1996, 16)

[5] “I am certain that I am a thinking thing. Do I not therefore also know what is required for my being certain about anything? In this first item of knowledge there is simply a clear and distinct perception of what I am asserting; this would not be enough to make me certain of the truth of the matter if it could ever turn out that something which I perceived with such clarity and distinctness was false. So I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.” (Descartes, 1996, 24)

[6] “[T]he indifference I feel when there is no reason pushing me in one direction rather than another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is evidence not of any perfection of freedom, but rather of a defect in knowledge or a kind of negation.” (Descartes, 1996, 40)

[7] “I know that everything which I clearly and distinctly understand is capable of being created by God so as to correspond exactly with my understanding of it. Hence the fact that I can clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from another is enough to make me certain that the two things are distinct, since they are capable of being separated, at least by God ... on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.” (Descartes, 1996, 54)

[8] We “shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it.” (Heidegger, 1993, 252)

[9] “But after all, mathematical science arose almost two centuries before technology. How, then, could it have already been set upon by modern technology and placed in its service? The facts testify to the contrary. Surely technology got under way only when it could be supported by exact physical science. Reckoned chronologically, this is correct. Thought historically, it does not hit upon the truth.” (Heidegger, 1993, 258-9)

[10] Nietzsche, on Heidegger’s reading, realised that this would not work, that “one day a people no longer measures up to the metaphysics that arose from its own history” (Heidegger, 1982, 116). Nietzsche thus develops the over-man because we need “a form of mankind that is from top to bottom equal to the unique fundamental essence of modern technology and its metaphysical truth; that is to say, that lets itself be entirely dominated by the essence of technology precisely in order to steer and deploy individual technological processes and possibilities” (Heidegger, 1982, 117). We need to give ourselves completely over to technology in order to take enframing to its full potential and achieve “absolute dominion over the earth” (Heidegger, 1982, 117).

[11] “Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing ... Where enframing holds sway, regulating and securing of the standing-reserve mark all revealing. They no longer even let their own fundamental characteristic appear, namely, this revealing as such.” (Heidegger, 1993, 261)

[12] “As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile, man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself and postures as lord of the earth.” (Heidegger, 1993, 261)

[13] “Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our vision of, and trust in, that which grants?” (Heidegger, 1993, 264)

[14] “Anything of this sort, and anything else that is basic for it, such as the ‘towards-this’ as that in which there is an involvement, or such as the ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ to which every ‘towards-which’ ultimately goes back – all these must be disclosed beforehand with a certain intelligibility.” (Heidegger, 1962, 118-9)

[15] “subject and Object do not coincide with Dasein and the world” (Heidegger, 1962, 87)

Lucretius

To answer the question of what role violence may play in the state of ataraxy, there are a number of other questions we must ask, and a number of other concepts and ideas to make clear. The question refers to what violence may mean in a certain context. So we clearly find ourselves needing to understand first of all what this context is. Secondly we need to determine what exactly we mean by violence, a deceptively vague term, and to distinguish the kind of violence that a life of ataraxy will remove from what, if any, will remain.

To the context then; Lucretius’ aim in the poem is the removal of fear from our lives. He refers to fear of death, fear of religion and the wrath of the gods among others. Our fears are numerous, and they are ill-conceived. We fear things not because they pose us danger, but because of our own irrational thoughts about them. These fears are not merely misguided; he does not describe them as plausible yet incorrect consequences of our experience. He likens them to the fears of children, scared of things in the dark [1]. Adults know the fears of children to be irrational, yet most have held on to other fears.

Religion is the primary source for these fears. It teaches that beings with divine power watch us through life, and that to ignore their rule will bring about punishment, in this life or the next [2]. Every thought and action of a person who truly believes this will be tainted by this fear. Something else we fear is the unknown, or that which we do not fully understand. This applies especially to acts of nature, which often have no immediately apparent cause, and as such are a source of much anxiety [3]. Lucretius believes that a great deal of this fear could be removed if only we understood the causes of these natural phenomena. Now we can understand why his poem is so concerned with the nature of the universe. The following passage, repeated a number of times throughout the six books, displays his intentions to alleviate the troublesome fears of mankind through explanation of natural phenomena.

“Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind

Not by the sun’s rays, nor the bright shafts of day,

Must be dispersed, as is most necessary,

But by the face of nature and her laws.” (Lucretius, 1997, 7)

Our understanding must extend beyond just these aspects of nature though; we must understand too our own lives and what progress can be made here. Turning to humans, Lucretius states that our needs “Are small indeed: things that take pain away, / And such as simple pleasures can supply” (Lucretius, 1997, 37). The good life according to Lucretius must not be misunderstood as a burdensome one with no pleasure. The point is that it is not a life dominated by intoxicating pleasure and the desire for more. Nature is perfectly equipped to provide what little necessities and simple pleasures we require, “since earth all things to all / Brings forth in bounty and nature’s skill supplies” (Lucretius, 1997, 143). As such we should never have an urgent need or desire for something which we cannot gain. The wise man wants for nothing [4].

This view should lead us to a life of ataraxy – calm or tranquillity. We should live without fear and burning desire, content with all that nature offers. This limiting of desire is essential to a state of ataraxy. Atoms “have a finite number of shapes” (Lucretius, 1997, 49), and so there is an inherent limit to the amount of new kinds of things, new colours or smells; new experiences on the whole are finite in number. Unchecked desire will overrun novelty in time. It is clearly uncertain when and if the limit will be reached however, and the problems caused by desire are far from limited to simple boredom.

Desire is known as a ‘constant thirst’ and an ‘evil lust of life' [5], it takes over our lives as we continue to desire the next thing which we currently do not possess. This thirst is never ending, it cannot be satiated. We become Sisyphus, suffering to reach our goal, only to have the victory wiped out and a new goal appear. It also fuels our fear of death, as the point at which we can no longer fulfil our raging desires. Death can come at any moment and steal away our future – whatever we desire, we must reach it quickly. Setting a limit to this desire frees us to enjoy what we do have and what we can achieve and to commit time and effort to “contemplate the world with quiet mind” (Lucretius, 1997, 171). This position which Lucretius is expounding – of setting limits to desire and fear, leading us to ataraxy, a life of simple pleasures – comes from the doctrines of Epicurus, to whom Lucretius makes a number of references, most notably at the beginning of book six (Lucretius, 1997, 179).

Understanding now the context in which we must consider violence, we can continue on to question what we might mean by the term. What may appear first when one considers violence is fights, brawls, perhaps war or the attacking of the innocent by a bully or tyrant. In other words, we think first of violence committed by humans, usually directed toward fellow men.

Unsurprisingly Lucretius blames religion for much human violence. He first relates the story of Iphianassa, whose father sacrificed her life, fearing that the gods may not allow his fleet safe passage across the waters [6]. Once again religion has fostered fear, and it has led to the murder of an innocent young girl by her own father. Yet this story is not powerful because of the death, or because of the brutal and personal method by which it is accomplished, but because of what it says about the unwavering strength of our fears. One might also point to ambition as a cause of violence, to which Lucretius would agree. He believes though that this greed is also fed by a fear of death (Lucretius, 1997, 72) as people attempt to live on immortally, in the memory of others if not in fact. In either case the cause of violence is fear, and his removal of it is intended to effect a removal of violence from our lives.

As was noted earlier, we fear the unknown. To know something is to hold a certain power over it, to lack this knowledge is to allow it to hold power over oneself. Our fear manifests in a need for control, for power at any cost. This control is itself gained through fear; he points to Grecian poets’ discussions of earth as a goddess, how they described that “spears are borne before her, savage signs / Of force, to terrify the crowd’s ungrateful minds / And impious hearts with fear of power divine” (Lucretius, 1997, 53). The purpose of the spears is not any use in direct violence, but to instil fear into the crowds, to bring them under order. Michel Serres (1995) discusses the same phenomenon; the object, whether it be a weapon (see below), a sacred object, or indeed money, creates fear and thus order. “Fear will freeze all the raying connections into a star and, thus, make them exist” (89). This is necessary for organised, civilised society, “the social bond would only be fuzzy and unstable if it were not objectified” (88).

We see the same phenomenon in man’s weapons of war, as each side of a conflict endeavours to create a more powerful and impressive tool of death than their enemy [7]. The point is not purely to cause death on a massive scale, but by the threat of such possibilities to force their enemies into retreat. It may seem then that weapons or other systems of control minimise violence, but this is not the case. Control itself is a form of violence, less explicit perhaps but no less powerful. Law for example is a system set up ostensibly to prevent injustice, but it does so through violent means – the threat of punishment (Lucretius, 1997, 169). Whether the sentences are physical punishments (torture or death) or jail time, retributive justice breeds fear; this is essential to its success.

As we’ve noted, Lucretius believes that fear can be overcome if we know and understand nature more thoroughly. He begins with the clinamen [8]. There are only two things in the universe – atoms and void. In the beginning the atoms rain down through the void in a uniform manner, with no interactions. At some point, the clinamen occurs – an atom deviates from its course and collides with others, causing a chain reaction. From these collisions emerge structure and, eventually, the world.

Atoms begin this account in movement, and this aspect never changes, they are in constant movement [9]. The atoms in our bodies do not outstay their welcome, they move on as new atoms enter. This is the essence of ageing, that eventually the atoms leaving outnumber the atoms entering, and over time “death comes rightly, when by constant flow / All things are thinned” (Lucretius, 1997, 68). There is a constant exchange of atoms between beings and nature, atoms leave a body to return either to nature or to the body of another, this is necessary for the continuance of life [10].

This slow dissolution occurs everywhere, nothing is exempt. The world itself shows evidence of a steady loss of particles, through evaporation for example, among other means. What this implies, and what Lucretius explicitly draws from it, is that the earth itself is mortal and will eventually dissolve (Lucretius, 1997, 144-5). Dissolution is active even on a global scale. This notion of dissolution becomes a new understanding of death in the Lucretian world. The term death has certain baggage, when in fact the physical process is simple dissolution into particles (Lucretius, 1997, 10). Atoms are not destroyed in death, but their combination is broken [11].

An understanding of the physics of death is intended to alleviate fears regarding the biggest unknown we can possibly face. It is a point he pushes throughout the book, mentioning early on that “Nature creates, increases, nourishes / All things that are, and into which again / Nature dissolves them when their time has come” (Lucretius, 1997, 4). Death becomes devalued, demystified, and hopefully no longer a source of such great fear. Not only is this because physically it is mere dissolution, but we do not have anything to fear psychologically or emotionally. Lucretius shows also that the mind is mortal, and hence that once death has struck us and we are no more, we are not capable of experiencing the punishments or the eternal loneliness or torment that we fear (Lucretius, 1997, 92-3).

We do not here have the time to review all of Lucretius’ attempts at removing fear from our lives. Yet even if we grant him these arguments, if we take the fears that cause human violence to be dispensed with, is ataraxy then a state completely free of violence? We thus come to the question of the violence of nature.

Lucretius frequently describes nature in very violent terms [12] – he clearly does not wish to claim that nature is pure and peaceful, as obviously blind as that would be. This violence is present at all scales; we know that the world itself is mortal, and he describes how the earth “One day will give to destruction; all the mass / And mighty engine of the world, upheld / For many centuries, will crash in ruin” (Lucretius, 1997, 139). Nature will end the world in violence, on a global scale. We have already discussed human violence, but Lucretius relates the life of man in nature, before society and hence before the fear spread by religion. Though it might have been expected, he has no illusions about the life of man in this period; he relates a blunt account of the lonely and gruesome death of a pre-societal man [13].

We may continue down to the atomic scale as Lucretius discusses what we might describe as the original chaos cloud, before structure and eventually life emerge (Lucretius, 1997, 149). Atoms in this primal state, after the clinamen, collide and clash with each other. Each new movement causes another atom to be smashed from its course into the path of other atoms. This story of violence at the atomic level is not an incidental one; it shows that violence is at the core of nature, it precedes the appearance of any structure, let alone the world and the life which depends upon it. This being said, the outlook appears bleak; as he describes it seems that “the door of death is never closed / To sky and sun and earth and sea’s deep waters. / No. It stands open, and with vast gaping mouth / It waits for them” (Lucretius, 1997, 147).

We fear nature, and rightly it seems. This fear is only amplified when we consider nature’s violence as the wrath of the gods (Lucretius, 1997, 171). Lucretius predictably dismisses these religious fears as ridiculous and irrational (Lucretius, 1997, 190), after all nature is not directed, there is no hint at some intentionality behind its violent acts. But the fears remain nonetheless. As usual these fears manifest in attempts at control. Unfortunately with nature this approach will never work. He describes as an example the attempt to use wild beasts such as bulls, boars and lions in organised warfare. In colourful language he recounts nature’s response to this attempted control – the animals react with pure, powerful and unfocused rage, tearing apart their supposed masters as gleefully as they do the enemy (Lucretius, 1997, 174).

In turn, our reaction to the violence of nature, in whatever form it may take, is always more violence of our own doing and, paradoxically, usually toward ourselves. We’ve seen an example of this already in the story of Iphianassa. Faced with the threat of violent storms her father commits murder as a sacrifice. An even clearer and more potent example is Lucretius’ discussion of the Athenian plague at the end of book six. This account relates the worst violence by nature in the entire poem, certainly from a human standpoint. The human response to the plague is of course the worst example of human violence in the entire poem, as the sufferers fight to bury or burn the dead (Lucretius, 1997, 216-7). There is much debate still regarding the plague, particularly its position at the very end of the poem [14]. Sedley (1998), expressing one position, claims that Lucretius had not yet finished the end of the poem, and had he not died before he had chance, would have added a more explicit section on enduring pain and suffering. His argument is that Lucretius has taught the reader such things as the limitation of desire and fear, but not the endurance of pain. Yet the endurance of pain is surely made possible precisely because of these limitations, particularly of fear. By contrast, Fowler (2007) suggests that some of the finals lines may be out of place, but that despite this minor change the poem is intended by Lucretius to end on his account of the plague. Lucretius is not writing a dry philosophical treatise here, he is acting as a teacher to the reader, rather than an expounder of doctrines. His choice to end on the plague is a challenge to the reader, who can only remain positive if he has really taken on board Epicureanism. His ultimate aim is not to relate the basics of Epicureanism for distanced viewing, but to persuade the reader to take it up as a way of life [15]. Fowler also notes that the poem “enacts its own dissolution as the words break down into their constituent syllables” (229). By ending in such a vivid picture of death and dissolution, the poem becomes a metaphor for its own message. “The DRN [De rerum natura] is to be read not merely as an exposition of the physical universe, but in some sense as its image as well” (Farrell, 2007, 91). Additionally, despite the language and nature of the closing pages of the poem, the opening of book two shows that Lucretius is viewing these horrific events from a mental distance, thanks to his Epicureanism (Muller, 2007).

How is the promised life of ataraxy possible, what understanding of the violence inherent to nature can we have that allows it to remain and alleviates fear of it? One point to understand is that death is not only inevitable, but necessary. We’ve seen earlier that particles which leave one body move on to another and cause it to grow and flourish, and we know that “nature makes good one thing from another, / And does not suffer anything to be born / Unless it is aided by another’s death” (Lucretius, 1997, 11). Death is required for the birth and continuance of the life of others. This is also the case on a global scale, where the eventual dissolution of the world will in all likelihood contribute to the emergence or birth of another. But this knowledge, of what we often call the circle of life, is nothing which can’t currently be taught to young children via the theme song to The Lion King. We need to investigate what is unique to Lucretius’ account.

Nature creates, and then when the time is right nature dissolves (Lucretius, 1997, 4). In his discussion of the chaos cloud, Lucretius describes the collisions in a great number of ways, sometimes as blows or clashes, and other times as unions or meetings (Lucretius, 1997, 149). The reason for these odd passages is that nature’s power is purely the movement of atoms and nothing more. The clinamen itself is a swerve or declination causing violent collisions, yet without it “there would be no collisions, no impacts / Of atoms upon atom, so that nature / Would never have created anything” (Lucretius, 1997, 42).

We are told that neither the powers of destruction nor those of creation can win an outright victory [16]. In addition, Lucretius writes a delightful passage regarding the particles of dust which can be seen moving within a sunbeam. He describes them first as in conflict and at war, and then goes on to talk of their graceful dancing (Lucretius, 1997, 39-40). What this all hints at is that because nature is simply the movement of atoms, it is neither creative nor destructive, or it is both.

“But slavery, by contrast, poverty and riches

Freedom, war, peace and all such things

As may come and go but leave things in their essence

Intact, these, as is right, we call accidents.” (Lucretius, 1997, 16)

Many things, war and peace are explicitly named here, are only accidents. Nature only appears violent to us because we label it as such. In nature there is not truly any distinction between the power that creates and the power that destroys. Each is simply the continual movement of atoms through void. Creation and destruction are part of the same process; each one is at the same time the other. Ataraxy can remain a state of calm and tranquillity if it accepts nature for what it is, without the values invested in it by humans.


References

Commager, H.S. (2007) “Lucretius’ Interpretation of the Plague” in Gale, M.R. (ed.) Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucretius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Farrell, J. (2007) “Lucretian Architecture: the structure and argument of the De Rerum Natura” in Gillespie, S. & Hardie, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fowler, P. (2007) “Lucretian Conclusions” in Gale, M.R. (ed.) Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucretius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, M. & Wilson, C. (2007) “Lucretius and the History of Science” in Gillespie, S. & Hardie, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lucretius. (1997) On the Nature of the Universe. Trans. Melville, R. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Muller, G. (2007) “The Conclusions of the Six Books of Lucretius” in Gale, M.R. (ed.) Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucretius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sedley, D. (1998) Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Serres, M. (1995) Genesis. Trans. James, G. and Nielson, J. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

[1] “For we, like children frightened of the dark,

Are sometimes frightened in the light – of things

No more to be feared than fears that in the dark

Distress a child, thinking they may come true.” (Lucretius, 1997, 37)

[2] “Nations and people tremble and proud kings

Shiver, limbs shaken by the fear of gods,

Lest for some foul deed or contemptuous word

The solemn hour of punishment be near.” (Lucretius, 1997, 171)

[3] “For sure fear holds so much in the minds of men

Because they see many things happen in earth and sky

Of which they can by no means see the causes,” (Lucretius, 1997, 7)

[4] “But if a man should guide his life by wisdom,

His greatest riches are a frugal life

And quiet mind. In that little there’s no poverty.” (Lucretius, 1997, 168)

[5] “And what is this great and evil lust of life

That drives and tosses us in doubt and peril? ...

But while we can’t get what we want, that seems

Of all things most desirable. Once got,

We must have something else. One constant thirst

Of life besets us ever open-mouthed.” (Lucretius, 1997, 100)

[6] “More often has religion itself

Given birth to deeds both impious and criminal:

As once at Aulis the leaders of the Greeks,

Lords of the host, patterns of chivalry,

The altar of the virgin goddess stained

Most foully with the blood of Iphianassa.” (Lucretius, 1997, 5)

[7] “the men of Carthage

Taught to endure the dreadful wounds of war

And all the mighty hosts of Mars embroil.

Thus Discord bred one foul thing after another

To bring new terror to the battlefield

And day by day increased the horrors of war.” (Lucretius, 1997, 174)

[8] “While atoms move by their own weight straight down

Through the empty void, at quite uncertain times

And uncertain places they swerve slightly from their course.” (Lucretius, 1997, 42)

[9] “Now if you think that atoms can be at rest ...

You are lost, and wander very far from truth” (Lucretius, 1997, 38)

[10] “when particles are shed

From a thing they diminish it as they leave it,

And then increase the object that they come to.

They make the one grow old, the other flourish,

But do not linger there.” (Lucretius, 1997, 38)

[11] “And death does not destroy things when they die

So as to bring destruction to their atoms,

But breaks their combination everywhere,” (Lucretius, 1997, 64)

[12] “The wind, its might aroused, lashes the sea

And sinks great ships and tears the clouds apart.

With whirling tempest sweeping across the plains

...

So fierce the howling fury of the gale,

So wild and menacing the wind’s deep roar.

...

So swirling with great rains the river rushes

With all its mighty strength against the piers.

It roars and wrecks and rolls huge rocks beneath its waves

And shatters all that stands in front of it.” (Lucretius, 1997, 11)

[13] “More often then one single man might die

Caught by wild beasts and torn, devoured alive,

Filling the woods and hills with screams, seeing

His living flesh buried in a living tomb.

And those whom flight had saved with mangled bodies

Pressed trembling palms over their ghastly sores,

Calling on Orcus with heart-rending cries

Till cruel torments put an end to life,

With none to help, not knowing what wounds need.” (Lucretius, 1997, 165)

[14] Another issue raised against Lucretius’ account of the plague is that he misrepresented or mistranslated his source (Thucydides), evidenced by numerous differences between the two accounts. Commager (2007) argues that these differences, when looked at closely, are too carefully worded to be accidents, and thus that Lucretius wrote his account for his own purposes rather than historical accuracy.

[15] Evidently it is a strategy that is capable of some success. Johnson and Wilson (2007) discuss the ‘new philosophy’ of the seventeenth century: “Thanks in large measure to their compelling presentation in Lucretius’ poem, Epicurean ideas effectively replaced the scholastic-Aristotelian theory of nature formerly dominant in the universities” (131).

[16] “Thus never can the motions of destruction

Prevail for ever, entombing life for ever,

Nor can the motions of creation and growth

Forever keep intact what they have fashioned.” (Lucretius, 1997, 52)

The validity of judicial-based Western ecological movements

The environment is currently a big issue, and ‘green’ awareness has been growing steadily in the decades since the first Earth Day in 1969. Few now deny the importance of improving our relationship with the environment, and reducing our negative effects on it, but there are many conflicting views on the appropriate action to take to this end. These varying viewpoints have led to a number of ecologically minded movements, all with similar goals, but all advocating different methods.

Some of these movements are said to focus on the role of the judicial system, seeing it as either the cause of the problems, or as a possible arena for its solutions. Ferry (1992, in Assad, 1999) comments on a “crusade in the American mode against anthropocentrism in the name of the rights of Nature” (p.150). This criticism is very specifically targeted against not just movements which focus on the judicial system, but those which see the solution in recognising the ‘rights’ of Nature, in the same way that we recognise certain basic human rights. Assad places Ferry’s position in contrast to “the camp of those who advocate the judicial rights of nature and regard the earth as a legal agent” (p.150),

“Ferry is referring to alternative ideologies that dominate various ecological movements in Europe and North America. But he is particularly critical of the American brand of ecological zealotry which readily transfers basic concepts of the Anglo-Saxon judicial system, which relates the protection of rights to that of interests, to the biosphere, so that its interests – the well-being of fauna and flora – metaphorize rapidly and without further reflection as to political consequences into rights of animals and trees as conceptual entities equal in all respects to the rights of the human being.” (p.150)

The environmental issue is unquestionably important, and at the forefront of public awareness and politics. It is also incredibly unlikely that law will not play some role in any solution to the problem. If the movements described by Ferry and Assad exist and are really as naive and unreflective as these authors suggest, it is important that we understand how and why. Only in this manner will it be possible to distinguish from these movements those contributions which can be of more use, and can propel green solutions forward. To this end we will consider the validity of these criticisms, which are indicative of a larger dismissive attitude towards the perceived popularity of this kind of approach.

Unfortunately Assad never makes absolutely clear their intended target, leaving us to investigate for ourselves the current status of ecological movements. Given the size of the issue this is not an easy task. There are a great number of green movements or ideologies. Wikipedia, for instance, lists the following; bright green environmentalism, deep ecology, eco-feminism, eco-socialism, free-market environmentalism, green anarchism, green conservatism, green liberalism, green libertarianism, green municipalism, green syndicalism and social ecology.

It would be impossible to review all of these movements here, but it may not anyway be necessary. Few, if any, of these actually focus on the judicial system, whether seeing it as the primary cause of the problem or the primary tool in its solution. One that may is free-market environmentalism, where taxation and property rights are seen as tools, intended to be used to turn ecologically friendly practices by large corporations into profitable ventures, encouraging businesses to become greener. However this movement plainly cannot be the intended target of Assad and Ferry, as it does not advocate the application of rights to nature.

This standpoint actually appears to be quite uncommon. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, along with Terry L. Maple, published a book entitled A Contract with the Earth (2007). Despite its title, within its pages the authors suggest less judicial involvement in environmental issues. Instead they place their faith in something they term ‘entrepreneurial environmentalism’. This works in a more similar vein to free-market environmentalism, where corporations are encouraged to find profit in eco-friendly practices. The difference is that Gingrich and Maple disapprove of legal punishments (such as taxation) for non-green practices, instead pushing for more exploration of profitable activities and more funding for entrepreneurs who wish to start up green businesses with aspects such as sustainable factories.

Neither of these then, fit the profile offered by Assad and Ferry. In fact it seems that only one movement does; only one movement actively advocates the application of rights to all aspects of nature. This movement goes by the name of earth jurisprudence, and the pillars of its views are as following:

1. There is a ‘great jurisprudence’ to which earth jurisprudence is subordinate
2. Humans are part of an ‘earth community’, in which all aspects needs to be allowed to fulfil their roles, failure here leads to negative effects on the entire community, rather than solely the aspect which has not been able to fulfil its role

This does not appear to be one of the largest ecological movements, yet it has been influential. There is a Center for Earth Jurisprudence set up in North America, offering multi-disciplinary courses in earth jurisprudence. In addition, and perhaps more astonishingly, the American borough of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania passed a law in 2006 recognising the rights of nature. This law, among other actions, “establishes that Tamaqua residents can bring lawsuits to vindicate not only their own civil rights, but also the newly-mandated rights of Nature” (CELDF, 2006).

At first glance the earth jurisprudence movement seems to be exactly as naive and unreflective as Assad and Ferry’s comments claim. Primarily of course, it does claim that all entities in its earth community have rights which ought to be recognised by law, and that the rights of humans do not supersede the rights of others. It also proposes a universal law (the great jurisprudence) which should dictate the limits of human law and action. Finally it seems to suggest the questionable view that the world contains an inherent harmony in which every aspect or entity has an important role to play, and if they all do so, things run smoothly.

Hidden in this movement though, there are hints at a potentially deeper understanding of the issues present. Chief among these is the recognition that what is required for the project to succeed is to “re-envision law and governance” (CEJ, 2008) in such a way that it can take into account, rather than excluding, all of non-human nature. It may be worth, then, taking a closer look at this movement and its literature.

Its founders are usually cited as being Father Thomas Berry and Cormac Cullinan, a South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist. The latter has written a book entitled Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice (2003), which is considered the most important work in the earth jurisprudence movement, and as such we will use this as our basis for a more in depth look at the movement.

There are a number of displays of what Assad and Ferry might describe as a naive ‘crusade’ against anthropocentrism. He obviously advocates the view of a great jurisprudence (or universal law) to which our legal systems are to be made subordinate. He claims that “if we recognise the validity and relevance of the Great Jurisprudence to human jurisprudence, then the ultimate source of jurisprudence and of law shifts out of the homosphere and beyond human control” (Cullinan, 2003, p.90), and that “any true Earth jurisprudence must be embedded within, and be an extension of the ‘Great Jurisprudence’” (p.84). The limits of human law then become marked off according to whatever we interpret as the law which the universe has handed down to us, and suddenly the whole thing begins to sound far too open to interpretation. He also agrees with what we noted as the second pillar of the movement, that every member of the earth community has a role and therefore possesses the right to exist in a manner which fulfils that role.

In addition, he also frequently goes overboard, as does so much green literature, with doomsday predictions of the impact humans have already had on the environment. He spends, for example, five pages of the book detailing factors of earth’s decline, describing how “we are ripping apart the web of life of which we form part, and destroying our evolutionary partners, at a frightening speed” (Cullinan, 2003, p.40), and speculates that we may have already sealed the fate of mankind, that it may now be too late to act. As part of this decline, he also adds a spiritual dimension, lamenting at many points the “loss of community and a sense of belonging” (Cullinan, 2003, p.41), which has led to untold “spiritual damage” (Cullinan, 2003, p.41). He concludes towards the end of his book that this spiritual dimension is the most important loss and that “degrading Earth also degrades our inner souls or deeper sense of self” (Cullinan, 2003, p.206).

However, there is much of value in Wild Law, and it may not be as shallow, naive or unreflective as it can be portrayed. Much of the issue here is with the language and rhetoric used, rather than the concepts and ideas. Regarding the doomsday predictions, there is no doubt that the overall human community has grown to a level at which it has an impact, potentially permanent, on its environment, and considers a vast majority of the planet to be included in its environment. This issue needs little comment, and the extreme views presented by Cormac Cullinan will serve no purpose other than to put off his more conservative and cynical readers.

Similarly with the spiritual loss, it can sound at times like, frankly, a load of hippy nonsense. But in places it is put forward (and could be done so to an even greater extent) as a restrained, reasonable point regarding the changing human social and psychological condition. One such example is in the final chapter, when he lays out the basic points of his argument, the below is taken from pages 204-5:

1. We humans are an integral and inseparable part of the Earth system.
2. This essential unity means that humans and our social systems are inextricably embedded within and influenced by the context of the larger Earth Community.
3. Therefore, the way we govern ourselves must of necessity be consistent with this context and must have as its purpose to ensure that the pursuit of human well-being does not undermine the integrity of Earth, which is the source of our well-being.
4. Human fulfilment is unattainable outside of a web of healthy relationships with the wider community of life on Earth.
5. Only by creating a jurisprudence that reflects the reality that human societies are part of a wider Earth Community and must observe certain universal principles, will we be able to begin a comprehensive transformation of our societies and legal systems.
6. In order to reorient our governance systems to reflect this Earth jurisprudence we need to establish laws that are ‘wild’ at heart in the sense that they foster, rather than stifle, creativity and the human connection to nature.
7. To implement wild laws effectively, we will need to cultivate personal and social practices that respect Earth, and social structures based on communities, and communities of communities, as found in nature.

Here he makes his argument without the need of these off-putting devices, even leaving out any reference to the tricky notion of the great jurisprudence. Though subordination to universal principles does appear in point five. There is, however, a thread running through the book which allows a much better reading of this in terms of the nonlinear dynamic notions of fractals, or self-similarity. This idea, associated with chaos theory, states that nature has the tendency to create self-similar patterns on every level of scale. Cullinan uses this idea to claim that our law and governance systems will work more harmoniously with both the human condition and the natural world if they are structured with this in mind, and brought into line with the patterns nature tends towards (Cullinan, 2003, p.171-2). This is a potentially rich and fruitful line of inquiry, and far more plausible than the way in which he usually talks about the great jurisprudence, but he frustratingly only uses it briefly, seemingly unaware of the inherent potential of the idea.

Even more briefly than this, he talks about “wild time” (Cullinan, 2003, p.155-6), which he distinguishes from clock time. While the latter is linear and ordered, the former is the true time of nature, more dynamic. He identifies linear time as another method by which we have quantified nature, and which removes us from it. He even talks of wild time as being elastic and cyclical, but he fails to connect this with the concept of fractals and the self-similarity of nature, though he perhaps has no framework in which to do this. Unfortunately then, wild time seems to end up being associated more with the awkward notion of spiritual damage, as linear time is affiliated with modern technological civilisation.

Cullinan takes time early in the book to analyse the basis of the current judicial and epistemological situation in a deeply embedded philosophical tradition, and covers the effects of Galileo, Bacon, Descartes and Newton on the beginnings of this tradition (Cullinan, 2003, p.44-6). He understands that the aspects of the modern worldview which earth jurisprudence needs to change date back to the times and ideas of these thinkers, particularly Descartes and his Cartesian dualism. It is only a shame that Cullinan does not pick up on the attempts of any later philosophy to rectify this situation.

As a result of this recognition, Assad and Ferry’s suggestion that their targeted ideologies simply naively apply legal principles to aspects of nature is not entirely correct. This understanding leads Cullinan to acknowledge the need to re-envision law and governance in a radical way, and at a much deeper level than a superficial application of rights to nature. At a number of points he questions basic legal concepts and their ability to take nature into account in any way which is not harmful to it. For example, he argues that the legal system should focus on strengthening relations in a community, rather than exacting revenge (Cullinan, 2003, p.73). He also points out, quite radically, that as long as the legal system views nature (i.e. land) as property, the earth can never be taken as an equal in our relationship with it (Cullinan, 2003, p.123).

Most importantly though, as regards the criticisms made by Assad and Ferry, the application of rights to nature may not be what it first seems. Cullinan struggles with his use of the term ‘rights’, stating that in earth jurisprudence it does not have the same meaning as in current legal systems, and being fully aware that continuing to use this term nonetheless leads to a lot of confusion (Cullinan, 2003, p.108-10). Instead of what he describes as the narrow sense employed by the legal community, he wishes to use the term rights to refer to the freedom of any member of the earth community to fulfil its role within the biosphere. An example is the right of a river to continue flowing. Though of course this still relies on the notion that everything has a role, and even if this is taken in the most plausible sense that ecosystems are fragile and each part contributes to the smooth running of the whole, it leaves humans with the task of discovering, understanding and agreeing on the roles of each part and their subsequent value.

One final aspect of Cullinan’s argument which is interesting but (as always) underdeveloped is his notion of ‘ecological literacy’. Anything which promotes a close relationship with nature and an understanding of its needs and, in this case, its ‘rights’, is going to meet with questions of its ability to reach an adequate understanding of these things. In particular, earth jurisprudence and anything else which formulates these concepts in the judicial realm, is going to have difficulty setting down in words what the legal rights of nature are. Law only knows how to speak in language, in words, preferably written, while nature does not speak in these terms at all. According to Cullinan the “language of the universe is primarily experiential” (Cullinan, 2003, p.148), and becoming ‘ecologically literate’ requires that we set aside language and re-learn to understand in non-linguistic ways.

This reading of Cullinan’s Wild Law hopefully shows that, whilst it does have many weaknesses and shows a great deal of naïveté, the earth jurisprudence movement does also show some potential, and is given less credit than perhaps it is due. Much of the confusion probably stems from the more popular literature and understanding of Cullinan’s ideas. The advocacy of rights of nature is rarely accompanied by any information of the radical new understanding of not only rights but the entire legal system which is required to achieve what earth jurisprudence is aiming at. It is not just poor communication though – reading the work of students on the CEJ website, it is clear that the majority have not gained even the level of understanding which Cullinan’s book displays, and thus continue to contribute to the view of this ideology which Assad and Ferry obviously share.

Importantly though, this analysis has tried to dig out the roots of these misunderstandings responsible, and hence how to avoid them in the future. This movement has some promising beginnings, but they are often vague and underdeveloped, and become confused with less satisfactory concepts and understandings. In addition to the misunderstandings, the analysis has highlighted these areas of strength, indicating concepts which may be subsequently developed to the benefit of the earth jurisprudence movement, providing it with a stronger philosophical grounding.

References

Assad, M.L. (1999) Reading with Michel Serres: An Encounter with Time. New York: State University of New York Press.

Center for Earth Jurisprudence. (2008) About CEJ. http://earthjuris.org/ [accessed 15.11.2008]

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. (2006) Tamaqua Law Recognizes Rights of Nature. http://www.celdf.org/PressReleases/TamaquaLawRecognizesRightsofNature/tabid/367/Default.aspx [accessed 05.01.2009]

Cullinan, C. (2003) Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice. Devon: Green Books.

Gingrich, N. & Maple, T. (2007) A Contract with the Earth. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.