Abstract
The 2020 coronavirus pandemic served to remind us that despite our Cartesian fantasies of control, naturing nature (natura naturans) is still active in the form of an untamed Other. The dominant reaction on most political sides was anthropocentric: if we do something– a doing generally framed within the scope of technique and management – nature shall go back to the kind and submissive non-viral neutrality that we appreciate in ‘her’ as a supposedly passive resource for productivism. How could humanity – a pandemic species itself and not only metaphorically – be better attuned with the powers of naturing nature, in a posture of co-creation rather than of a reactive technocratic war against the non-periodic or ‘monstrous’ aspects of life? This question is a matter of philosophical health: the future of humanity does not depend on statistics and logistics, but on the possibility of a philosophical (re)generative politics, a trustful care for creative singularity rather than an anxious control and production of regularity. Humanity’s collective health presupposes this reconciliation with naturing nature and the deployment of a global shared cosmology based on the creative healing-growth flux of originative creativity. This regenerative and life-affirming creative Real is here termed ‘Creal’, and we call ‘crealectics’ the generative philosophical health that favours healing growth.
Highlights
The coronavirus pandemic colonised the human realm in 2020, globally inducing a heavy physical, economic and psychological cost
We advocate here the possibility of an ontological “regenerative politics” (Haraway 1991), a generative philosophy or “thought in the act” (Manning and Massumi 2014), via the renewal of a shared cosmology based on natural creativity (Whitehead 1929), a life-affirming creative Real that is termed “Creal”
Many political decisions during the pandemic were based on the analysis of numeric thresholds and statistics
Summary
Dr Luis de Miranda, Center for Medical Humanities, Uppsala University, Sweden. First submission: 3 March 2021 Acceptance: 11 October 2021 Published: 14 December 2021. The coronavirus pandemic colonised the human realm in 2020, globally inducing a heavy physical, economic and psychological cost This pan-mediatic pandemic served to remind us that the natural world could at any time become a contingent agent rather than merely functioning as passive matter for our technical domination. De Miranda / The healing-growth future of humanity like Sweden (where the author of the present article lives), was tempted, in the early months of its interaction with the coronavirus, to be faithful to its cultural tradition of a slightly more trustful, less paranoid attitude towards natural flows: no lockdowns or curfews, no protective masks, collective gatherings allowed, no police-controlled state of exception, etc. We advocate here the possibility of an ontological “regenerative politics” (Haraway 1991), a generative philosophy or “thought in the act” (Manning and Massumi 2014), via the renewal of a shared cosmology based on natural creativity (Whitehead 1929), a life-affirming creative Real that is termed “Creal” (de Miranda 2017b)
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