Some reflections on human identity in the Anthropocene

This article observes that both the similar and the dissimilar are of ethical importance in discourse on human identity. There is a need for a common humanity and to guard against domination in the name of difference – precisely by recognising the otherness of the other. This also applies to reflections on what it means to be human in the age of the human, namely the Anthropocene. A survey is offered of how this tension between the similar and the dissimilar plays itself out in the work of five theorists, namely Dipesh Chakrabarty, Clive Hamilton, Dona Harraway, Michel Serres and Kathryn Yusoff. On this basis, six tentative conclusions are offered: (1) Despite the appropriate ethical emphasis on difference and otherness, the quest for the universal in the particular cannot be readily abandoned. (2) Such a sensitivity for the universal in the particular needs to be extended to a recognition of the way in which an integrated earth system functions. (3) The ethical emphasis on difference and otherness should be extended to non-human animals. (4) Human dignity and the ‘integrity of creation’ are not necessarily inversely proportioned. (5) Relations may well have an ontological priority over individuals. (6) Identity need not be constituted by the distant past or the immediate presence as if continuity over time forms a guarantee for a sense of identity.Contribution: This article explores a core question in discourse on the Anthropocene, namely ‘What does it mean to be human in the age of humans?’ It compares the views on human identity of five theorists, namely Dipesh Chakrabarty, Clive Hamilton, Dona Harraway, Michel Serres and Kathryn Yusoff and on this basis offers six observations to take the debate forward.

In the Beginning

This chapter presents a general account of the pure business of being true, otherwise put, of what is so of truths and falsehoods merely by virtue of their being that. It introduces Frege’s notion of a thought and of the thought’s logical and ontological priority, the idea that whole thoughts come first and are multiply decomposable, other items in the business of being true to be understood in terms of their role in such decompositions. It also discusses his idea of winnowing the psychological from the logical, and the distinction between generalities and particular cases.

Heidegger’s Presentational Strategies:

Drawing upon the interpretations of Martin Heidegger’sBeing and Timeoffered by the favorable commentators such as Hubert Dreyfus, Robert Dostal, Harrison Hall, and Charles Taylor, this paper responds to Heidegger’s unsympathetic commentator Herman Philipse’s critical interpretation of Being and Time(Sections 12-18 of Division I) and shows the validity of Heidegger’s claim for the ontological priority of the practical world over the theoretical world. This has been done by showing that the practical world where readiness-to-hand is the norm, emerges from a self-correcting,transient originary situation where readiness-to-hand is primordial to us while we arrive at the theoretical aspect of presence-at-hand when we encounter the unreadiness-to-hand. This paper also shows that Heidegger’s text is coherent and consistent. Thishas been done by looking at the structure of Heidegger’s presentational strategies and by making links explicit in them. We have also looked afresh at how he defines certain pivotal elements of his practical world and their relationship with each other.

ATIVIDADES EDUCATIVAS EMANCIPADORAS NA FORMAÇÃO DE PROFESSORES

This article is an instrument through which we problematize the discussion about the possibilities of developing emancipatory educational activities in teacher training courses based on Tonet's reflections (2013) and from de critical-historic pedagogy. We list four possible activities of this nature, taking into account the specificity of the educational dimension, the contradictions that permeate education in capitalism, the distinction between the immediate interests of the empirical students and the essential interests of the concrete students and, still, the dialectical reciprocity of the contents and forms of teaching, with the ontological priority of content over forms. Thus, such activities are proposed with the greatest concern for a teaching practice that values the critical promotion of the intellectual, scientific, artistic and philosophical level of teachers and students. It is a humanist stance, which defends the elaboration of criticism and human integrity against all the misrepresentations that this form of sociability imposes on us

Christopher Seitz and the Priority of the Christ Event

While Seitz’s The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity shows some sympathy for historical-critical readings of the Old Testament, he rightly insists on a theological starting point: he maintains that the Old Testament itself provides providentially inserted clues that demand a Trinitarian reading, and so he maintains that the Old Testament itself “pressures forth” a Christian reading of the text. We should keep in mind, however, that it is only through the acknowledgement of the ontological priority of the Christ event (and of the church’s identity within the Christ event) that the Spirit enables us to recognize the hidden, deeper meanings of the text.

Husserl’s Sachhaltigkeit and the Question of the Essence of Individuals

Phenomenology can be roughly described as the theory of the pure essences of phenomena. Yet the meaning of essence and of concepts traditionally tied to it (such as the concepts of a priori and of essential necessity) are far from settled. This is especially true given the impact modern science has had on established philosophical views and the need for revisiting certain core notions of philosophy. In this paper I intend to review Husserl’s view on thingness-essence and his conception of the essence of individuals, based mainly in his writings from the time of Logical Investigations, Ideas, and later of Experience and Judgment. Taking account of the work of Lothar Eley in Die Krise des Apriori, among others, I will inquire into the ways in which phenomenology may undermine (one could even say fully “destroy”) the view of essences as non-factual, as well as undermine their ontological priority. Doing so may help to shape a conception of material or formal individual essences and generally of essences as concrete objects of experience in virtue of well-defined epistemic ones.

Object-disoriented geographies: the Ghost Tower of Bangkok and the topology of anxiety

There is a broad consensus that psychoanalytic theory cannot offer an account to further engage with the ontological turn toward the object that human sciences face today. In particular, the structuralist side of psychoanalysis, most prominently promoted by Jacques Lacan, is supposed to be unable to grasp an object independently from the subject. Against this background, it is no surprise that ‘object-oriented’ geographers ignore psychoanalytic theory. My aim is to investigate the interstices between the object-oriented turn and Lacanian psychoanalysis. I argue that the critiques miss a crucial aspect of Lacan’s ontology: he does not question that there are objects located ‘out there’, but rather adds that psychoanalysis engages with another object whose location remains uncertain. I follow Lacan’s most important invention, the object a, to argue that this object is crucial to understanding the ontology of Lacan as an ‘object-disoriented’ ontology. While object-oriented approaches in cultural geography give ontological priority to the material conditions of existence, Lacanian ontology allows us to understand how material objects become spectralized through an immaterial surplus. To substantiate this claim, I explore the role of anxiety with regard to the Sathorn Unique Tower, an abandoned skyscraper sitting in the middle of Bangkok. Widely known as the ‘Ghost Tower’, this ruin is internationally considered to be haunted. By focusing on a movie and an interview about the Ghost Tower as well as my own ethnographic observation of it, I not only explore the topological dimension of the ghost but also demonstrate that it is precisely the impossibility of localization that enables an object to disorientate the subject.