Abstract
AbstractDe-anthropocentrism is the leitmotif of philosophy in the twenty-first century, encouraging diverse and competing thoughts as to how this goal may be achieved. This article argues that the method by which we may achieve de-anthropocentrism is ethical rather than metaphysical – it must involve a creation of the self, rather than an interpretation of the given human conditions. Through engagements with the thought of Nietzsche, Levinas, and Foucault, and a close reading of Baudelaire’s poem “La Beauté,” I will illustrate three ethical commitments essential to de-anthropocentrism: to abandon the claim to knowledge associated with human reason, to remain in perpetual quest of an object, and to transgress the given perceptual structure through aesthetic experience. In contrast to Kantian philosophy built upon universal human reason, art is the ethical arena where each artist creates their own way to relate to the object, while de-anthropocentrism occurs – this article argues – when the artist includes the self as the field of creation. Object-Oriented Ontology in my assessment is the only branch of philosophy that truly achieves de-anthropocentrism.
Highlights
De-anthropocentrism is the leitmotif of philosophy in the twenty-first century, encouraging diverse and competing thoughts as to how this goal may be achieved
This article argues that the method by which we may achieve de-anthropocentrism is ethical rather than metaphysical – it must involve a creation of the self, rather than an interpretation of the given human conditions
Through engagements with the thought of Nietzsche, Levinas, and Foucault, and a close reading of Baudelaire’s poem “La Beauté,” I will illustrate three ethical commitments essential to de-anthropocentrism: to abandon the claim to knowledge associated with human reason, to remain in perpetual quest of an object, and to transgress the given perceptual structure through aesthetic experience
Summary
De-anthropocentric scholarship may include various forms of posthumanities, ecocriticisms, new materialisms, and theories of thinghood. My focus here will be limited to the school of thought that addresses directly the Kantian heritage. Speculative realism as a movement gathers diverse efforts which take Kantian finitude seriously, all with a burning desire to reapproach reality or the thing-in-itself. The goal of the conference, according to the published program notes, was to “problematise the subjectivistic and anthropocentric foundations of much of ‘continental philosophy,’ while differing significantly in their respective strategies for superseding them.”[2] In Harman’s later effort to consolidate the heterogeneous thoughts into a philosophical movement, he picks up the term “correlationism” to characterize the central sentiment of continental philosophy and announces that “the original Speculative
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