Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People

Description

What is it that makes humans, human? As science and technology challenge the boundaries between life and non-life, between organic and inorganic, this ancient question is more timely than ever. Acclaimed Object-Oriented philosopher Timothy Morton invites us to consider this philosophical issue as eminently political. It is in our relationship with non-humans, that we decided the fate of our humanity. Becoming human, claims Morton, actually means creating a network of kindness and solidarity with non-human beings, in the name of a broader understanding of reality that both includes and overcomes the notion of species. Negotiating the politics of humanity is the first and crucial step to reclaim the upper scales of ecological coexistence, not to let Monsanto and cryogenically suspended billionaires to define them and own them.

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He is the author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, The Ecological Thought and Ecology without Nature.

"I have been reading Timothy Morton's books for a while and I like them a lot." - Bjork "By suggesting imaginative ways to resolve other crises, could humanities scholars stave off the crisis engulfing their own subjects? Morton proposes a future in which the venerable ideas of "nature" and "environment" are so much detritus, useless for addressing a looming ecological catastrophe. His book exemplifies the "serious" humanities scholarship he makes a plea for. My head's still spinning." -Noel Castree, Times Higher Education (Praise for The Ecological Thought) "Timothy Morton brings to bear his deep knowledge of a wide array of subjects to propose a new way of looking at our situation, which might allow us to take action toward the future health of the biosphere. Crucially, the relations between Buddhism and science, nature and culture, are examined in the fusion of a single vision. The result is a great work of cognitive mapping, both exciting and useful." (Praise for Hyperobjects) - Kim Stanley Robinson, author Aurora and the Mars trilogy