CUL120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Environmental Ethics, Posthumanism, Ecofeminism
27 Aug 2018
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What is nature?
1. The structures, processes and casual powers that are constantly operative within the physical
world…” (laws of nature, biological processes)
2. The ordinarily observable features of the world( landscape wilderness, the bush)
3. The concept through which humanity thinks its difference and specificity. Its the concept of
non- human…(what is nature)
* Ancient Greese
* Wild nature was controlled by gods
* Aristotle (C4th BCE) ‘Nature’
* could be investigated
* Humans not separate, but at the top of the natural order
* Plants and animals were ensouled
* Nature-a resource for humanity
* wild nature and nature
* before humanism
* Buddhism: all life is interrelated/interdependent
* living wed that interconnects individual beings
* Christianity: god gives humans dominion over nature
* Humans are charged with the stewardship of nature.
* Nature is culturally and socially constituted
* “quote on phone…”
* Humans, nature and humanism
* Renaissance enlightenment humanism re shapes the relationship with nature
* Reconceptualisation of ‘the human’ reconceptualisation of nature
* “Humanism, patriarchy, colonialism, science and capitalist political economy, all defining features
of features of modernity, all contribute to the certain and perpetuation of a culture/nature
binary”(Sunberg & Dempsey 2009)
* Humanism dissolved the idea of a divine order
* Man is ‘master and owner of nature’ (Descartes)
* Humans free to assert their superiority over nature (Rusen 2006)
* Anthropocentrism
* human chauvinism
* human experience = the centre of everything
* Nature=
* resources
* adversary
* benchmark
* Nature as a resource
* Raw material-transformed into use value for humanity (Connor 1996:278)) & exchange-value for
capitalism
* Francis Bacon (1641) ‘Nature to be commanded must be obeyed’
* Nature as an adversary
* nature and humanity have conflict interests
* ‘We dissociate ourselves from nature in order to manipulate it, but then cannot empathise with it
or relate to it…’ (Plumwood 2002:121)
* Nature as a benchmark
* Culture is ‘more or less a traumatic self-extrication from nature’ (Connor, 1996:278)
* Nature reference point from which humans can measure their progress
* culture is the way we over come nature
* Consequences of Anthropocentrism
* Ecological, environmental and cultural destruction
* “the reason the rationalist culture of the west has been able to expand and conquer other
cultures as well as nature was that it has long lacked their respect-based constraints on the use
of nature…” (Plumwood 2002:117)
* fundamental to colonialism
* Ecological denial
* illusion of disembeddedness
Document Summary
Its the concept of non- human (what is nature) * humans not separate, but at the top of the natural order. * christianity: god gives humans dominion over nature. * humans are charged with the stewardship of nature. * renaissance enlightenment humanism re shapes the relationship with nature. * reconceptualisation of (cid:1684)the human(cid:1685) reconceptualisation of nature. * (cid:1688)humanism, patriarchy, colonialism, science and capitalist political economy, all defining features of features of modernity, all contribute to the certain and perpetuation of a culture/nature binary(cid:1689)(sunberg & dempsey 2009) * humanism dissolved the idea of a divine order. * man is (cid:1684)master and owner of nature(cid:1685) (descartes) * humans free to assert their superiority over nature (rusen 2006) * human experience = the centre of everything. * raw material-transformed into use value for humanity (connor 1996:278)) & exchange-value for capitalism. * francis bacon (1641) (cid:1684)nature to be commanded must be obeyed(cid:1685)
