‘Nor can we give the whole account of any one thing whatever’: an eighteenth-century window to object-oriented ecocriticism in a sermon by Joseph and Thomas Warton and the theology of Joseph Butler

Abstract

ABSTRACTFor recent ecocritics, such as Timothy Morton, ‘hyperobjects’, such as global warming and mass extinctions can be statistically proven to exist, but are ‘withdrawn’ from our immediate perception. These phenomena therefore challenge common Enlightenment models of perception – with disastrous consequences for the planet. This article argues that in order to find useful precursors to this ‘new’ outlook, we should consider certain neglected eighteenth-century ways of thinking: specifically, the analogical philosophy of Joseph Butler. Taking as its test case a heretofore little-known sermon by the brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton, this article argues that Butler’s analogising shows us that the attempt to understand massively entangled systems precedes the ‘modern’, which Bruno Latour claims we have never been.