Ontology and Closeness in Human-Nature Relationships: Beyond Dualisms, Materialism and Posthumanism (AESS Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Sciences Series)

In __Ontology and Closeness in Human-Nature Relationships__, Neil H. Kessler identifies the preconceptions which can keep the modern human mind in the dark about what is happening relationally between humans and the more-than-human world. He has written an accessible work of environmental philosophy, with a focus on the ontology of human-nature relationships. In it, he contends that large-scale environmental problems are intimate and relational in origin. He also challenges the deeply embedded, modernist assumptions about the relational limitations of more-than-human beings, ones which place erroneous limitations on the possibilities for human/more-than-human closeness. Diverging from the posthumanist literature and its frequent reliance on new materialist ontology, the arguments in the book attempt to sweep away what ecofeminists call “human/nature dualisms. In doing so, conceptual avenues open up that have the power to radically alter how we engage in our daily interactions with the more-than-human world all around us. Given the diversity of fields and disciplines focused on the human-nature relationship, the topics of this book vary quite broadly, but always converge at the nexus of what is possible between humans and more-than-human beings. The discussion interweaves the influence of human/nature dualisms with the limitations of Deleuzian becoming and posthumanism’s new materialism and agential realism. It leverages interhuman interdependence theory, Charles Peirce’s synechism of feeling and various treatments of Theory of Mind while exploring the influence of human/nature dualisms on sustainability, place attachment, common worlds pedagogy, emergence, and critical animal studies. It also explores the implications of plant electrical activity, plant intelligence, and plant “neurobiology” for possibilities of relational capacities in plants while even grappling with theories of animism to challenge the animate/inanimate divide. The result is an engaging, novel treatment of human-nature relational ontology that will encourage the reader to look at the world in a whole new way. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Ontology and Human-Nature Relationships (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 3-21 Ecofeminist Dualisms (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 23-33 Posthumanism’s Material Problem (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 35-88 Front Matter ....Pages 89-89 Human-Nature Relationship Model (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 91-106 Dualist Effects on Structure and Dynamics (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 107-179 Front Matter ....Pages 181-181 Foundations of Human-Nature Relational Ontology (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 183-194 Relational Perception and Knowledge (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 195-220 Material and More-than-Material Considerations (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 221-230 Front Matter ....Pages 231-231 Feelings (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 233-285 Thoughts (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 287-327 Front Matter ....Pages 329-329 An Example of Modern Closeness (Neil H. Kessler)....Pages 331-333 Back Matter ....Pages 335-343