Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism by Marcus Boon | Goodreads

Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism by Marcus Boon | Goodreads

Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism

(TRIOS)

by Marcus Boon, Eric Cazdyn, Timothy Morton

 3.67  ·   Rating details ·  24 ratings  ·  1 review

Though contemporary European philosophy and critical theory have long had a robust engagement with Christianity, there has been no similar engagement with Buddhism—a surprising lack, given Buddhism’s global reach and obvious affinities with much of Continental philosophy. 

This volume fills that gap, focusing on “nothing”—essential to Buddhism, of course, but also a key concept in critical theory from Hegel and Marx through deconstruction, queer theory, and contemporary speculative philosophy. 

Through an elaboration of emptiness in both critical and Buddhist traditions; an examination of the problem of praxis in Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis; and an explication of a “Buddhaphobia” that is rooted in modern anxieties about nothingness, Nothing opens up new spaces in which the radical cores of Buddhism and critical theory are renewed and revealed.

Review

“Nothing’s overarching contribution clarifies the problematics of Buddhist critical theory as the intra-active, performative effects of a mutualizing ethico-ontoepistemology. This invites critical mindfulness of the immediate existential-material circumstances that may at once inspire and constrain any given attempt/location of Buddhist critical theory.”

About the Author

Marcus Boon is professor of English at York University in Toronto.

Eric Cazdyn is Distinguished Professor of Aesthetics and Politics at the University of Toronto.

Timothy Morton is the Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging

Reviewed in Canada on 21 September 2021

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A tour through theory and praxis, Buddhism, and the contemporary extrapolation of structures of thought. The three essays are challenging - I read them over twice, necessary to understand.

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REVIEW OF NOTHING: THREE INQUIRIES IN BUDDHISM

WRITTEN BY GLENN WALLIS

Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism. By Marcus Boon, Eric Cazdyn, and Timothy Morton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

By James M. Cochran, Baylor University*

Marcus Boon, Eric Cazdyn, and Timothy Morton open Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism claiming that their book is nothing: “So much nothing, so little time. This is a book made of nothings: with a smile and a quizzical frown, let us talk about nothing” (1). 

Yet, their book is also about something—a lot of “somethings,” often competing and in tension with each other’s something. Boon’s essay, “To Live in a Glass House is a Revolutionary Virtue Par Excellence: Marxism, Buddhism, and the Politics of Nonalignment,” begins the collection, looking at the ideologies and political dimensions of Buddhism. Next, in “Enlightenment, Revolution, Cure: The Problem of Praxis and the Radical Nothingness of the Future,” Cazdyn argues for a reclamation project to save the radical force of Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Finally, Morton concludes the collection with “Buddhaphobia: Nothingness and the Fear of Things,” an essay examining modernity’s cultural anxiety surrounding Buddhism. While these essays cover three distinct topics, taken together, they represent a serious and significant engagement with critical theory and Buddhism.

Nothing attempts to fill a gap in critical theory, which, in Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton’s accounts, has largely disregarded or ill-treated Buddhism. According to the three authors, contemporary philosophy and theory have witnessed a “Christian turn,” but there has been no equal “Buddhist turns.” Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton admit that they have cannot completely explain the absence of Buddhism in Western critical theory, but they point to two main reasons—at least within the works of Badiou, Žižek, and Agamben. First, Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton claim that “there is a lack of engagement born from the sheer compulsion inherent in Western traditions that makes it difficult for any scholar to realize how entangled in them she is” (12). Second, many contemporary philosophers draw from Hegel’s texts on Buddhism, drawing from “rather sketchy Jesuit reports from Tibet” (12). Recognizing these limitations, the authors attempt to illuminate both the gaps and connections between Buddhism and theory.

Boon’s essay “To Live in a Glass House is a Revolutionary Virtue Par Excellence: Marxism, Buddhism, and the Politics of Nonalignment,” explores the political dimensions or the ideologies of Buddhism. Boon frames his essay by considering the common misperception that Buddhism and Marxism (or critical theory, broadly) are radically opposed: “the world-negating spirituality of the Buddha as ideological obfuscation versus the concrete struggle over material conditions of the Marxist militant on the one hand” (25). Boon recognizes that this binary—of Buddhism as an ideology-free system and Marxism as a radically ideological system—holds true at times, but, as the historically complex uses of Buddhism demonstrates, this binary is far too simplistic.

Boon opens with a consideration of the French theoretical thinker Georges Bataille, who had significant influence on Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, Achille Mbembe, Judith Butler, Lee Edelman, and many others, and, in particular, Boon focuses on Bataille’s relation to Buddhism. Bataille was introduced to yoga and meditation in the late 1930s, and his interest in Buddhism (and other Eastern religions) influenced his notion of “sovereignty,” a concept grounded in nothingness, unknowing, and self-annihilation. Boon reveals how Bataille bases “sovereignty” in Buddhism, believing that monasticism is the “perfect solution” that is “pure expenditure” and “renunciation of expenditure” (Bataille, qtd. in Boon 46). Boon also argues for a reconsideration of the political dimensions of “inner experience” in Buddhism, one that offers a “potential connection between nonalignment and nonviolence in the politics of sovereignty” (57).

To further explore and develop the connection between nonalignment and nonviolence, Boon next turns to the 1945-80 Cold War period of decolonization in India, China, and other places, and he argues that Buddhism, during this period, was starkly partisan. On one hand, Buddhism represented the “residual force of tradition, often transfigured by and adapted to European colonial regimes;” on the other hand, Buddhism was central to the development of anticolonial forces (57). Yet, following World War II, these attempt to develop a Buddhist politics failed because of “military takeovers,” “communist attempts to disassemble the feudal or colonial political-economic basis of existing Buddhist societies”, and the “fading away of the politics of ‘nonalignment’ ” as Asian nations integrated themselves into the “global capitalist economy” (60).

Although a Buddhist politics of nonalignment failed to fully emerge, Boon, by reading the works of Gendun Chopel, Gary Snyder, Thomas Merton, and others, imagines the possibility of such a politics of nonalignment. That is, Boon imagines a system that “rejects the alienation of both capitalist and communist materialisms” (73). For Boon, this political system would involve “gift economy, interdependence, the inconceivable,” elements that are, as Boon argues, central to both a Bataillean general economy and the “Buddhist description of the human condition” (74). Thus, Boon situates a Buddhist politics as an alternative vision within the polarized politics of the Cold War.

Boon closes his essay by turning to a discussion of speculative non-Buddhism and the works of Glenn Wallis, Tom Pepper and Matthias Steingass. Boon offers a brief summary of what are, in his view, the two main arguments of speculative non-Buddhism: first, they critique the appropriation of Buddhist techniques and ideologies to resonate with and reinforce “global corporate capitalism,” and, second, they develop speculative non-Buddhism as a model to “think about and practice Buddhism” in contrast to any of the X-Buddhist communities that rely on “irrational obedience to the authority of tradition” (83, 84). Boon critiques “Wallis et al.” for their lack of “subtlety and…compassion” and for oversimplifying the divide between X- and non-Buddhism (85).

However, Boon admits that the value of speculative non-Buddhism is that it signals the “emerging relationship between Buddhism and the emerging paradigm of cognitive capitalism” (86). In part, the relation between Buddhism and politics is founded in interiority or cognitive activity.

Boon concludes, wondering “What will cause human beings to act differently?” (90). While Boon wrestles with this question throughout his essay, he has no clear solution, but he imagines the possibility of collective Buddhist practice spurring this change and bringing about compassion. Boon advises readers to practice: “But basically what I’m saying is meditate. Do it. Right now” (91). Beyond this advice, Boon suggests we have no simple solutions.

Next comes Cazdyn’s investigation of praxis in Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis in “Enlightenment, Revolution, Cure: The Problem of Praxis and the Radical Nothingness of the Future.” In this essay, Cazdyn compares Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis in an attempt to understand the negotiation of thought and action:

This is also an effort to understand Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis as problematics—as modes of engagement that prioritize the inextricable relation between their distinct forms of thought and action (and non-thought and non- action) on the one hand and the historical situation in which they are situated and generate new problems on the other hand. (113)

By first considering and re-theorizing praxis, defined as the “problem of the relation between theory and practice,” Cazdyn hopes to re-emphasize the radical dimensions of enlightenment, revolution, and cure (106). Specifically, concerning Buddhism, the essay attempts to answer, or at least approach, the question of how one attains enlightenment without desiring it.

After establishing his goals and frameworks, Cazdyn traces the original problem of praxis in the histories and development of Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. I do not find it necessary to regurgitate Cazdyn’s historical surveys here: it is sufficient to recognize that, first, Cazdyn sees Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis as originating at initial problems of praxis within specific historical situations. Second, Cazdyn argues that the “recentering of the problem of praxis…is always accompanied by a return (sometimes reactionary, sometimes radical) to the original production of praxis in each discourse” (117). Third, drawing from his first two points, Cazdyn asserts that some of the most radical contemporary engagements with Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis are occurring outside of these fields in forms that might not seem to resemble Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis; yet these contemporary engagements are still connected to enlightenment, revolution, and cure.

Toward the end of his essay, Cazdyn turns toward the concept of nothing. In particular Cazdyn is interested in the work of Arata Isozaki because his negotiation of the problem of nothing speaks to the contradiction of “how to think and act for a radical break with our current situation (as individuals and as collectives) without reproducing global capitalism’s dominant ideological assumptions that there is no alternative, only more of the same” (164). According to Cazdyn, Isozaki’s negotiation of this problem is especially significant because it attempts to unite theory and practice.

For Cazdyn, Isozaki’s music hall “Ark Nova,” an impermanent, human heart-like structure that inflates right on top of the rubble of the past, always ready to be relocated and placed on top of the rubble of the future,” demonstrates the negotiation of the problem of nothing (170). “Arc Nova” makes no attempt to stop or withstand future disasters; instead, it imagines the possibility of a future different than our present. According to Cazdyn, “Ark Nova” bespeaks Isozaki’s interest in ma, or space-time. Isozaki’s use of Ma, Cazdyn continues, represents the “repressed on the return—the future that cannot be contained or managed, and always arrives as something that exceeds our present possibilities” (168). As such, ma is a central component of enlightenment, revolution, and cure.

In the first essay, Boon seems to conclude that meditation is—at least—one answer; in the second essay, Cazdyn concludes, “There is no answer. There is praxis” (173). That is, Cazdyn has no answer to the impossible question: “How does one still hold on to the desire for enlightenment, revolution, and cure without this desire turning into a self-satisfied retreat from the world, a sad militancy, a naïve optimism, or a nonsystematic critique of local transgressions and individual symptoms?” (171). “Ark Nova” represents one answer to the problem of praxis but it does not completely revolve it. Ultimately, praxis remains, and, potentially, the paradoxes that praxis reveals reinvigorate the radical component of Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis.

Morton closes the collection with his essay, “Buddhaphobia: Nothingness and the Fear of Things.” Morton’s work on Buddhaphobia clearly grows out of his previous theoretical writings, especially his work on dark ecology, strange strangers, and object-oriented ontology. Anyone familiar with Morton’s previous works will instantly recognize his intricate mesh of philosophical inquiry and clever prose: for example, at the close of his essay, Morton writes, “Or was American wing mirrors say: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. Buddhaphobia is nothing but a fear of subjectivity as such” (252).

Morton’s essay investigates a fear of Buddhism or Buddhaphobia, a modern anxiety concerned with nothingness. For Morton, this nothingness is theoretically complex and would require a few pages of summary, and, or the sake of space, Morton’s nothingness is meontic nothingness, which has a “certain physicality, a physicality whose phenomena I cannot predictably demarcate from its reality in advance” (203). Meontic nothingness is queer and uncanny, speaking to the gap between thing and phenomenon.

Like Boon, Morton also addresses non-Buddhism, a framework that Morton sees as affected by Buddhaphobia. According to Morton, one weakness of non-Buddhism is that it is intellectually dismissive of devotion, or “nonconceptual intimacy of mind with itself,” which is central to many x-Buddhist schools (188). In addition, non-Buddhism rejects mindfulness as “relaxationism,” but Morton disagrees with this argument because “Buddhisms” never claim “calm attention” as a goal; instead, the emphasis is “what one is aware of…impermanence, suffering, emptiness” (188-89). Moreover, many Buddhist texts critique mindfulness so, in this manner, to critique mindfulness is to find oneself deeper within the Buddhist tradition.

The majority of Morton’s essay centers on Western modernity’s fear of Buddhism, consisting of and connected to a “fear of consumerism, fear of narcissism, fear of passivity, fear of loops, [and] fear of things” (213). This phobia is, at its core, a fear of intimacy with the self because what is within one is more than just oneself: “There is an entity in me that is not me…this idea compresses a central tenet of Mahayana Buddhism concerning Buddha nature—it is an entity in me that is more than me” (189).

Morton also attempts to counter Žižek’s (and others’) argument that Buddhism is narcissistic, and Morton does so, precisely by defending narcissism. Critics of Buddhism suggest that it is a religion of the self, concerned only with self-soothing. Yet, Morton responds that this critique is itself narcissistic: “The trouble with trying to step outside of narcissism is the same as the trouble with trying to step outside of language” (223). Morton continues, explaining that the critique of Buddhist as narcissistic stems from a “narcissistic woundedness so painful that it seems better to paint the whole world with its raw colors than examine itself in all its halting lameness” (223). For Morton, narcissism is necessary to relate to others and oneself.

By considering the cultural anxieties around Buddhism and nothingness, Morton suggests that we can recognize the weird encounters between Buddhism and critical theory that have been happening since the mid-eighteenth-century Jesuit accounts of Tibet that informed Hegel. An engagement with Buddhism also means a “meaningful encounter with commodities and consumerism, and thus with those unloved things we call objects” (251). To survive in the postmodern age, Morton concludes, people need a less fearful encounter with nothing and Buddhism.

Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism represents a helpful starting point for spurring critical investigations of theory and Buddhism; yet, in my view, the collection is not without weaknesses. At times, the collected essays seem to meander, as Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton wrestle with the intersections between Buddhism and critical theory. This meandering is likely intentional as the three authors, moving through an array of theoretical and Buddhist works, attempt to answer their research questions, but it is meandering nonetheless and fails to retain a clear development of the argument. Additionally, because one of the work’s central concerns is theory, the work is obviously theory-heavy. The discussion of and dissection of theory is, of course, expected and reasonable, but some more explicit definitions and development of the authors’ theoretical concepts and texts could help keep readers more grounded in Nothing.

Beyond the essays themselves, Nothing includes a brief and helpful glossary of Buddhist terms, prepared by Claire Villareal. Certainly the glossary is not essential to Nothing, but it seems to serve as a significant part of Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton’s mission—that is, to spark a serious engagement with critical theory and Buddhism. The glossary offers a means for those in the philosophy and theory fields to fully digest Nothing as well as grasp basic terms that they can then incorporate into their own critical contemplations. Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton decide not to include a critical theory glossary, “assuming that most readers of this text will already have some familiarity with the critical theory lexicon” (19). As I have mentioned, a critical theory glossary to coincide with Villareal’s glossary might improve Nothing.

Still, as a work that attempt to jump start conversation about Buddhist and critical theory, Nothing succeeds. Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton neither attempt to synthesize their separate arguments nor do they pretend that they have said all there is to say about the intersection of Buddhism and theory. Nothing is certainly not a comprehensive treatment of Buddhism and theory; indeed, Boon, Cazdyn, and Morton announce, “This conversation is not intended to end, but rather to begin the investigation” (20). The three essays succeed through the ways in which the essays, while containing distinct arguments, speak to and interact with each other, especially in approaching the concept of nothing and the relationship between practice and thought. Despite its limitations, Nothing is a worthy attempt to prompt the “Buddhist turn” in critical theory.

_______________

 James M. Cochran is a doctoral student in the Religion and Literature Ph.D. program in Baylor’s English department. He teaches in the first-year writing program at Baylor, and his research centers broadly on twentieth-century and contemporary American literature, religion, and culture. He can be found online at Academia.edu or on Twitter.

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The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire: Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovitch: 9780819621641: Amazon.com: Books

서양고대세계사   

M.I. Rostovtzeff (지은이),지동식 (옮긴이)고려대학교출판부1990-03-01

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목차

1. 역사

2. 고대사

3. 희랍과 에게해의 왕국

4. 아나톨리아의 희랍

5. 스파르타

6. 아테네와 앗티카

7. 희랍문명

8. 페르시아 전쟁

9. 아테네 제국

10. 펠로폰네소스 전쟁

11. 희랍문명과 사회발전

12. 기원전 4세기의 희랍

13. 마케도니아 및 페르시아와의 전쟁

14. 희랍문명

15. 알렉산더 이후의 희랍세계

저자 및 역자소개

M.I. Rostovtzeff (지은이) 

저자파일

 

신간알리미 신청

<서양고대세계사>

최근작 : <서양고대세계사>

지동식 (옮긴이) 

저자파일

 

신간알리미 신청

<서양고대세계사>

최근작 : <서양고대와 중세의 사회>,<서양 고대와 중세의 사회>,<로마제국은 왜 멸망했는가> … 총 6종 (모두보기)

출판사 제공

책소개

이 책《서양고대세계사》는 러시아의 석학 M.I.Rostovtzeff 의 Greece(Oxford University, 1968)와 Rome(Oxford University,1960)을 합본하여 완역한 것이다. 저자는 러시아혁명 직후에 망명하여 옥스퍼드와 위스콘신 그리고 예일에서 고대사를 강의하는 한편 널리 알려진 로마제국 사회경제사와 헬레니즘시대 사회경제사를 저술했다. 이 두 저서의 기본적인 사관이 바로 이 역서에 반영되고 있다. 저자는 조국 러시아에서 스스로 관찰하고 경험한 것을 고대사에 적용시켜, 고대의 정치·사회·경제·문화를 예리하게 분석하고 있다

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The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire: Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovitch: 9780819621641: Amazon.com: Books

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rostovtzeff

The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire

Rostovtzeff was notable for his theories, notably, of the cause of the collapse of the Roman Empire, which he expounded in detail in his magisterial The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926). Scarred by his experience of fleeing from the Russian Revolution, he attributed the collapse of the Roman Empire to an alliance between the rural proletariat and the military in the third century A.D. Despite not being a Marxist himself, Rostovtzeff used terms such as proletariat, bourgeoisie and capitalism freely in his work and the importation of those terms into a description of the ancient world, where they did not necessarily apply, caused criticism.[7]

Rostovtzeff's theory was quickly understood as one based on the author's own experiences and equally quickly rejected by the academic community. Bowersock later described the book as "the marriage of pre-1918 scholarly training and taste with post-1918 personal experience and reflection." At the same time, however, the detailed scholarship involved in the production of the work impressed his contemporaries and he was one of the first to merge archaeological evidence with literary sources.

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Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff

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4.6 out of 5 stars

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Armin Yazdani

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book from and Excellent Seller!

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2021

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The book is a must read for students who are interested about why the roman empire didn't reach an industrial revolution!

The scientific content of the book is beyond my humble history scientific level to rate; however I received an excellent shipping service form the seller. I appreciate it.

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Polybius7

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic.

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2016

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A brilliant classic.

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Olivier Clementin

5.0 out of 5 stars Class struggle in the Roman Empire

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2004

Rostovtzeff's book covers the economy of the Roman Empire between the First Century B.C. and the reforms of Diocletian in 284. His main thesis is that the history of the Empire is essentially a three-way struggle between the Senatorial upper classes, the city bourgeoisie (knights) and the proletariate.

After a brief account of the Social War and of the end of the Republic, the first part of the book is a detailed description of the economic environment in each province of the Empire under the Principate. He shows how the Emperors tried to develop the economy by supporting the city bourgeoisie against the Senatorial class, which was slaughtered in the various civil wars, and had almost totally disappeared at the end of the Antonine dynasty.

The second part, the most interesting in my view, is an account of the Crisis of the Third Century. According to the author, the failure of the bourgeoisie to assume the military defense of the Empire led to the development of an army of peasants who hated the city elites, and who took advantage of the political instability to establish a military dictatorship. The Emperors were only tools in the hands of that proletarian army and were almost always assassinated after a few years. Ever heavier taxes were necessary to pay the soldiers. Taxes were levied inefficiently and arbitrarily on the city elites (when they were not massacred in civil wars), which killed individual enterprise and eventually led to a major economic decline, and more taxes. Rostovtzeff concludes that the crisis was in fact a proletarian revolution, and he makes an interesting parallel between a letter written in Egypt in the Third Century and letters he's receiving from the Soviet Union to illustrate the point (the book was written in 1926).

The history ends with Diocletian, who stabilized the military dictatorship in order to save the Empire politically, instead of returning to the earlier policy of supporting the cities. That merely postponed the end of the Empire for two centuries. For the later period, AHM Jones' Later Roman Empire is recommended.

The reasons for the economic decline of the Ancient World remain an historical puzzle (see for exampleThe End of the Past by Aldo Schiavone), and Rostovtzeff does not give any definitive answer, but his arguments are very interesting, and the process by which a sophisticated society became a system of generalized slavery in which everyone was worse off is rather disturbing.

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Glenn McDorman

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2003

In short, this book is a masterpiece of historical scholarship. Rostovtzeff describes every aspect of socioeconomic life throughout Roman civilization from the Julio-Claudians through Diocletian in a wonderful narrative. It is hard to imagine that a book primarily concerned with how people feed and clothe themselves can be an engrossing page-turner, but this book is. If you are at all interested in the history of real people, you must read this book.

29 people found this helpful

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/898166.The_Social_Economic_History_of_the_Roman_Empire

Mat rated it liked it

Shelves: history-antiquity

A good read, BUT a word of caution from an authority on Roman history and culture : "Today there is probably not one reputable historian who would accept the basic thesis of Rostovtzeff's book. Few, however, would question the greatness of his work" G. W. Bowersock, Daedalus , Vol. 103, No. 1, 1974 (see JSTOR). And another, extracted from a 10-page review : "Rostovtzeff was [...] what might be called an 'unhappy Marxian' [and his work] is probably the most extreme interpretation of the kind among all first-rate works about antiquity." S. Dow, The American Historical Review , Vol. 65, No. 3, 1960 (see JSTOR). (less)

Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People: Morton, Timothy: 9781786631329: Amazon.com: Books

Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People: Morton, Timothy: 9781786631329: Amazon.com: Books



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Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People Hardcover – August 22, 2017
by Timothy Morton (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 45 ratings



A radical call for solidarity between humans and non-humans

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. 

In our relationship with nonhumans, we decide the fate of our humanity. 

Becoming human, claims Morton, actually means creating a network of kindness and solidarity with nonhuman 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 crucial step in reclaiming the upper scales of ecological coexistence and resisting corporations like Monsanto and the technophilic billionaires who would rob us of our kinship with people beyond our species.

=====


Editorial Reviews

Review
“I have been reading Timothy Morton’s books for a while and I like them a lot.”
—Björk

“Considered by many to be among the top philosophers in the world, especially among those tackling issues related to human effects on our environment, Morton herein provides an important, spirited, and sometimes frenetic analysis of the foundational assumptions of Marxism and other -isms with regard to nature and culture.”
—Jeff Vandermeer, author of The Southern Reach trilogy, The Millions

“A very good introduction to what Theory (capital T) might have to say about climate change and species die-off.”
—Ted Hamlton, Los Angeles Review of Books

“A great work of cognitive mapping, both exciting and useful.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Mars Trilogy (in praise of Hyperobjects)

“His book exemplifies the ‘serious’ humanities scholarship he makes a plea for. My head’s still spinning.”
—Noel Castree, Times Higher Education
 (in praise of The Ecological Thought)

“Sassy, brilliant, a genuine engagement with and of thought, this work tunes us to a thrilling, endorphinating way of thinking: my drug of choice.”
—Avitall Ronell, New York University (in praise of Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism)

“Timothy Morton is a master of philosophical enigma. In Dark Ecology, he treats us to an obscure ecognosis, the essentially unsolvable riddle of ecological being. Prepare to be endarkened!”
—Michael Marder, author of The Philosopher’s Plant
 (in praise of Dark Ecology)

“A poetic tour de force that is both academically and philosophically rigorous.”
—Steven Umbrello, Journal of Critical Realism

“Drawing from the Buddhist understandings of emptiness and form, Morton develops a version of ‘object oriented ontology’ that seeks connection and particularity without essences, fully formed identities, or wholes.”
—Whitney A Bauman, Religious Studies Review
About the Author


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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso (August 22, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages

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Christine M. Skolnik
5.0 out of 5 stars Humankind Rocks!Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2017
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In his characteristically eccentric and predictably enthralling new book, Humankind, Timothy Morton argues that Marxism has erred in excluding nonhumans from “social space,” but is capable of correcting its course because of its commitment to solidarity. The exclusion of nonhumans is a bug, rather than a feature of Marxist thought. Capitalism, based on property ownership and various forms of slavery, conversely, is necessarily exclusive and hierarchical.[i] Resources, including humans and nonhumans, are subordinated to the transcendent value of capital, and human beings, in effect, develop kinship bonds with capital rather than human and nonhuman beings. Folding anarchy back into Marxism, Morton argues that solidarity with nonhuman beings simply effaces our ties to consumer capitalism (“Kindness,” 2300 – 2313). Though Morton criticizes the New Left’s focus on identity politics for reproducing essential difference and thus undermining solidarity, his vision is certainly a boon for the Left (“Things in Common,” 207-261). I’m not quite sure if Morton’s radical reconfiguration of social space is Marxism as we know it, or as it was conceived, but Humankind might encourage intellectuals to trade their chains for an optimistic New New Left. Humans and nonhumans in solidarity, willing Trump’s last tweet.

One of Morton’s most radical concepts is the symbiotic real. I say it’s radical not because symbiosis is new, but because Morton presents non-hierarchical symbiosis as an integral feature of political life. When we become aware of the symbiotic real, solidarity is no longer a value, choice, or decision. It simply is, and any social, economic, or political theory that externalizes nonhuman beings is recognized as inoperable—an insolvent fantasy (“Things in Common,” 66 – 87). Another important element of Morton’s project here, and I think it’s his most significant one to date, is interrogating life, categorically. “Life” based on substance ontology, and specious distinctions between its various forms, is antithetical to life (“Life,” 807). Rather than subordinating life to the “agrologistic” principles of non-contradiction and the excluded middle, that create mutually exclusive categories of life and non-life, and identify life with autonomous being, Morton rediscovers and celebrates life as quivering, shimmering, spectral (“Life,” 770, 776, 846, 850, 860). He sings of life forms that overflow their boundaries, downward and upward. Human beings, composed of myriad nonhuman beings, and haunted by what have heretofore been considered inanimate objects; nonhuman beings composed of what have heretofore been considered inanimate objects, and haunted by human beings. “[T]he intrinsic shimmering of being” (“Life,” 860).

Subscendence is the most theoretically important concept of the book, and possibly the most important piece of Humankind’s political argument. Under the sign of subscendence, Morton illustrates that wholes are smaller and more fragile than the sum of their parts (“Subscendence,” 1767 – 1794). And this applies to menacing hyperobjects such as neoliberalism. Though we imagine it as Cthulu, Morton suggests neoliberalism may be ontologically small and easy to subvert. It pervades social space, but it cannot contain or rule its parts. Our fear and cynicism is based on an assumption that neoliberalism is a transcendent whole, but solidarity with human and nonhumnan beings can help us dismantle it. Locally unplugging from fossil fuel energy grids seems trivial, until we rediscover solidarity and begin to replicate such local forms of resistance (“Subscendence,” 1726 – 1828).

Subscendence replaces mastery. Because parts exceed wholes, and because all objects withdraw, increasing knowledge does not result in mastery. The more objects and levels of objects we discover, the more objects withdraw. And this includes our knowledge of ourselves. The more we know about ourselves the more we perceive our withdrawl. “You are a haunted house” (“Subscendence,” 1965). The dream of access to the thing itself is replaced by a real feeling of being followed or watched. Intimacy is paranoia, and truth is being haunted (“Subscendence,” 1912; “Kindness,” 2649)

Humankind, like human beings, is “a fuzzy, subscendent whole that includes and implies other lifeforms, as a part of the also subscendent symbiotic real” (“Subscendence,” 2013). This quote reminds us not to reify the symbiotic real—it’s not a new transcendent whole, God or Gaia. Just as humankind is haunted by the inhuman, so the symbiotic real is haunted by spectral beings in a spectral dimension (“Specters,” 1198; “Kindness,” 2274).

Another of the book's powerful and utterly persuasive concepts is “The Severing,” a “traumatic fissure” between the “human-correlated world” and the “ecological symbiosis of human and nonhuman parts of the biosphere” (“Things in Common,” 272). Solidarity is the “default affective environment,” but anthropocentrism suppresses solidarity between humans and nonhumans, and erects boundaries between humans (“Things in Common,” 296 – 299). The effects of this intergenerational trauma are widespread, resulting in a desert landscape “from which meaning and connection have evaporated” (“Things in Common,” 312, 355). This results in alienation, not from some transcendent presence but from “an inconsistent spectral essence we are calling humankind,” as well as the spectrality of nonhuman beings (“Species,” 2197-2201). “What capitalism distorts is not an underlying substantial Nature or Humanity, but rather the ‘paranormal’ energies of production” (“Species” 2204).

Ultimately, Morton argues that solidarity is kindness, and kindness is an unconscious aspect of ourselves, which we share with nonhumans (“Kindness,” 2283- 2306). Acknowledgement, awareness, and fascination are all aesthetic and ethical/political acts of solidarity (“Kindness,” 2296 – 2368). And since our origins lie in the symbiotic real, these “styles” of being also belong to nonhumans (“Kindness,” 2294, 2453, 2835). Indeed, recent animal behavior studies suggest that solidarity is inherited from nonhumans (“Kindness,” 2860). Morton ends by queering the active and passive categories, and “veering” love toward the environment (“Kindness,” 2963, 3119). Solidarity requires nonhumans because we are inseparable from the symbiotic real (“Kindness,” 3123 – 3127). We are them. “Solidarity just is solidarity with nonhumans.”

[i] “Things in Common,” 416, 430. All in-text references are to chapter titles and locations.

See complete review at Environmental Critique.

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Walter Lerchner
5.0 out of 5 stars Speculative Realism at it's bestReviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020
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With language reminiscent of Douglas Hofstadter combined with the sharp wit reminding of Richard Dawkins building on the penetrating logical clarity of Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology, Morton somehow finds the contradictory space between certainty and non-existence where life exists. Building on the tensions of Marx and Nitsche, Heidegger and Kant he arrives at a new ecology of the Symbiotic Real - humans and non-human objects including molecules, ideologies and societies, co-existing as part of symbiotic hyperobjects. Ideas that might just save us all, or at minimum shine light on our path towards dissolution.

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Richmond
5.0 out of 5 stars greatReviewed in the United States on September 29, 2018
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great

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Nicholas J. Perry-Guetti
3.0 out of 5 stars A Former Realist Returns to Idealism; a Postmodern Liberal Restructures MarxismReviewed in the United States on February 23, 2018

I avoided reviewing this book for a long time after reading it, as I have very mixed opinions of it. On one hand, I think that both the writing and many of the ideas expressed thereby are excellent, as Morton's writing (technically and stylistically) always is. I agree wholeheartedly with the most appreciative critics' reviews of the *content* of the book, to which I have nothing to add: in terms of text, Morton has always been a superb ecocritic and a compelling philosopher, and his writing has an allure that is impossible to overstate.

Philosophy, however is not just about content. It is also about context, sincerity and integrity. Up until now, Morton has championed the idea of "ecology without Nature", in which true ecological thinking dispenses with the Western myth of Nature as a given, reified object, and he has used as a reference the new philosophy movement of Object Oriented Ontology, a very interesting and endlessly applicable turn towards realism pioneered by Graham Harman, to support his rejection of Nature in favor of a non-holistic approach to ecological communities as dynamic multiplicities. 

In the last several years, Morton has become so associated with Object-Oriented Realism that he is considered one of its central figures. It was therefore with great disappointment that I read, in *Humankind*, Morton establishing a singular entity––the "Symbiotic Real"––as the sum total of all ecological relationships. The Symbiotic Real is Nature by another name, pure and simple, and although Morton goes to great lengths to explain that this is an "implosive" rather than an "explosive" holism, it is yet a reified object "over there" that we are all "part" of. This represents not only a rebranding of what he once considered a very bad idea (a sort of "new and improved" version of the very mechanistic, agrilogistical monadism he simultaneously decries––quite rightly, I believe), but also a sharply pronounced turn away from Speculative Realism to an identifiably idealistic way of thinking. Instead of the indefinite regress of beings so magically evoked in the object-oriented realist Graham Harman's philosophy (and Tim Morton's earlier work!), we now have a definite, easily knowable end-point for thinking ecology...the very picture of what Morton has elsewhere derisively called "the easy-think substance". It is, indeed, far too easy an answer to qualify as Object-Oriented Speculative Realism, in which the Real (Symbiotic or otherwise) is simply not directly knowable, as nothing we can know about it is ever really IT, and each revelation is only a prelude to the next stage of our search. This idealist turn represents OOO very badly, and should not in my opinion be taken as typical of the movement. This inconsistency is also not very representative of good philosophy in general, sacrificing rigorous experimental thinking for the sake of attractive, shining truths that are easy to digest.

Familiarity with Morton's blog and general online presence, outside of his books, also reveals another significant disconnect: this time a political rather than a philosophical one. Although he is a more than qualified Romanticism scholar (Romanticism, that is, in the sense of Jane Austen, Wordsworth, Da Quincy, Shelley, Coleridge, etc.), a startlingly innovative eco-critic (I strongly advise you to read Dark Ecology), and a peerless writer of alluring prose, one thing he is probably least qualified to attempt is the restructuring of Marxism he undertakes in this book. An outspoken centrist liberal Democrat who denounces with bitter ridicule such excessively radical figures as Bernie Sanders (in all seriousness, Sanders is no farther to the left than an old-school New Deal Democrat) for drawing votes away from candidates he considers more sensible, it is impossible to understand what Tim Morton could possibly have the right to recommend for the development of socialism, or indeed what *interest* he might have in even a modified form of Marxism. The compelling sociopolitical and human-ecological propositions he makes in the book would actually stand quite well without any mention of Marx at all, though this might require a longer book as the easy reference to the historical figure would necessitate more in-depth explanation, of which Morton would be easily capable.

And kindness, one would think, requires *no* explanation at all, and Humankind certainly centers around the theme of kindness. Again, however, Morton's presence online, outside of his own literature, reveals a level of intellectual combativeness at least as strident as the examples of it he often decries, both in this book and elsewhere. His appeal to kindness is touchingly eloquent and well-made; it is, however, the man's *words* that should inspire our course, rather than the man himself.

Mixed feelings indeed. The writing and *most* of the ecological ideas I loved as much as anything Morton has ever written before...probably better, actually. The misrepresentation of OOO philosophy and the playing fast-and-loose with Marxism is, I believe, unworthy of him, and of more serious philosophers and Marxist theorists, though I admit I certainly have no more familiarity with the latter than Morton does. Will I still read his soon to be published next book? You bet I will; I just hope its doubtless beautiful writing style will be better matched by an integrity of content and a consistency with the author's true gifts, because in Humankind, Morton goes very eloquently––and unfortunately––astray.

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Dan Schellenberg
5.0 out of 5 stars IncredibleReviewed in the United States on September 20, 2017
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Fantastic book and fantastic service

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LJS
3.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff, if only I knew what it meantReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2018
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impenetrable. I'm certainly not claiming to be a genius, but I do have a couple of masters' degrees and I couldn't work out what Morton is getting at. Its an interesting read - if you want to google every other sentence, but he assumes such a vast amount of previous reading that it must be impenetrable to anyone without a phd in the subject. Tim, once you've figured out what all this means, do you think you could write us plebs a pamphlet? Cheers,

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Duncan Spence
5.0 out of 5 stars The best reading of Marx(ism) since Harry CleaverReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2020
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Professor Morton's unusual style puts some people off. Which is a pity because what he writes "shows his working" as it used be said. He writes not only his thinking but the thinking of his thinking. According to Nietzsche this was one of the great dangers faced by philosophers trying to write, Morton knows this, he is conscious of writing in a way very different from the philosophers in Nietzsche's sights. This book is a marvellous tour round every issue faced by radicals.be they activists or intellectuals. Like all of Morton's work, this is a book about how to think differently.

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Laura
5.0 out of 5 stars Very insightfulReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2020
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Helped me get the A I needed plus it was an insanely interesting read.
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François Truyts
5.0 out of 5 stars Very, very interestingReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 15, 2020
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Existential paradigm shift
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4tt3nt4t
5.0 out of 5 stars I'm no academic though I do enjoy reading similar textsReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2017
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Well, I'm no academic though I do enjoy reading similar texts. I was blown away by his common sense & choice of actors.
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Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People

by
Timothy Morton
3.71 · Rating details · 273 ratings · 34 reviews
A radical call for solidarity between humans and non-humans

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. In our relationship with nonhumans, we decide the fate of our humanity. Becoming human, claims Morton, actually means creating a network of kindness and solidarity with nonhuman 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 crucial step in reclaiming the upper scales of ecological coexistence and resisting corporations like Monsanto and the technophilic billionaires who would rob us of our kinship with people beyond our species. (less)

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Hardcover, 224 pages
Published July 4th 2017 by Verso
Original Title
Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People
ISBN
1786631326 (ISBN13: 9781786631329)
Edition Language
English

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Oct 01, 2017Nick rated it it was ok
Stylistically designed to mask a lack of novel ideas or interesting synthesis of existing knowledge. Smug and obfuscatory language is knowingly used to couch a series of ideas the author seems to beleive are evident in their assertion without recourse to real world context or evidence (evidence? Reductionist!), interjected with non-sequiturs and cringe worthy folksiness. At least I was able to scrape the bibliography for interesting references, references this text puts a fog in front of rather than shines a light on. (less)
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Sep 06, 2017Andy rated it it was amazing
Reading this book was like having the conversation that comes at the end of the film "Her," but where I, the reader, realize that Tim, with Alan Watts/Buddhist flavors, has achieved like a quantum capacity beyond my capacity to imagine.
BUT, unlike in "Her," I didn't feel narcissistic and depressed to witness this leap that left me limning my limits. Because things flicker and I still see some of them. (less)
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Oct 18, 20175 Track rated it it was amazing
Shelves: go-read-this-now
Bear with Morton as he states his position & defines his terms. It's slow & careful going. Plow ahead if you are uncertain, backtrack as needed—or don't, & count on your capacity to integrate knowledge while you are doing other things. Read it before you go to sleep, & dream about the concepts in the form of relations between your pickup truck & your apartment, city streets & inclement weather, music & food.

It should not be 'radical' to think that we might consider 'non-humans' in our worldview, in our day-to-day & moment-to-moment. That it IS radical should give anyone pause for thought.*

What is more interesting here is the idea that in defining our selves as 'human'—as opposed to everything else, as opposed to 'nature'—we have set in motion a long-running machine which intends to destroy meaning, context, interconnectedness, if it has to destroy the world to do so.

*(or thoughtful paws) (less)
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Apr 10, 2020Perry rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: philosophy-lit-theory
It took me two tries, but I finally managed to finish this book, and it was, to say the least, frustrating.

The goal of the book is to imagine a Marxism that includes nonhumans. This is very theoretical, and Morton passes through ontology, metaphysics, sociology, and so on to make his point. However, what this practically means (and this is the unfortunate bit) remains to be explained. Although by no means does this invalidate the book, the word "veganism" does not appear, and to my knowledge "vegetarianism" appears only once -- despite the fact that the predominant way in which humans interact with some of the most abundant life-forms on the planet is by killing them and eating them or using the byproducts for other purposes. You would think this would be at least addressed. But, and I do understand this, this is a book about philosophy and as such it is heavy on theory. It is a playful journey through the history of ideas. But the problem with speculative realism (and OOO or object-oriented ontology, the scene/school with which Morton is most closely associated) is that it does't change anything about how one interfaces with the world. It is a shuffling around of the categories of being "behind the scenes".

There are a handful of interesting concepts in this book, and though Morton's method of philosophy is irreverent and sloppy, a few shining bits of insight break through. Let's start with those.

First, there is the concept of what Morton classifies as the "correlationist" world view. To paraphrase Kant, there is truly a world out there, but all that we (we being humans, and often humans of a specific caste) can access is data about that world. There is a gap, and so one restricts the definition of "world" to be the sphere accessed by humans. Morton imagines a slider between the "correlator" and "correlatee". What is necessary, then, is to turn the slider towards letting the thing-in-itself assert itself. Of course, any "access mode" we have is incomplete, and we cannot escape the prison of our perception, so this doesn't much change how we think about nonhumans. But downstream of this ontology (which is related to animism or First Peoples religion) one can imagine a world in which the agency of nonhumans is treated with more reverence. An intriguing idea, and one I agree with.

Next, there is the "Severing", a moment (but really a process located everywhere in space and time-- what Morton calls a hyperobject) at which humans walled off the nonhuman concomitant with the Neolithic revolution. Morton asserts that a truly staggering amount of Western cultural perceptions is a consequence of the trauma of this event. While I don't really buy this, it is true that exclusionary societal structures necessarily entail violence, and that speciesism and racism can both be seen as mirroring the cloistering-in of humanity away from nature that is the Severing. At the very least, it is true that in "taming nature", there is a violent exclusion going on, one which certainly has higher order effects.

Morton critiques teleology in a number of guises, and this is where things start to get sloppy. A number of terms are defined as being "the same", as the group of "things Morton doesn't like" grows like a game of Katamari Damacy. There is Hegel's Geist, "explosive holism" (the belief that the whole is greater [in what sense? Keep wondering!] than the sum of its parts), agrilogistics, western patriarchy, Mesopotamian utilitarianism, and so on. For the record, I more or less agree with this critique, but the connections drawn between all these subtly different concepts are not at all well-justified. In its stead, Morton posits a theory of "implosive holism", or "subscendence", the belief that the whole is "less than the sum of its parts". Again, it's a bit of a mystery what more than/less than mean exactly (Morton says "has more qualities than", which doesn't clear much up) but the attractiveness of the idea survives. Instead of thinking of each individual as subservient to capitalism, the human species, the planet etc, we turn this upside down and say that the individual is more than a component of a whole. This is subtly different than neoliberal individualism (there is no society), since instead, individual and society are placed on more or less equally footing. There is some dodgy mathematics here where Morton argues that a forest is "ontologically smaller" (there is no such thing) than its trees because a forest is one thing, and each tree is one thing. It's not nearly as original an idea as Morton seems to think it is, nor does this theory make neoliberalism or capitalism less powerful and dominant, but it is an appealing idea. I'm not willing to go to bat for Morton, though, when he insists that "cynical reason" is all that is behind the belief that capitalism is more powerful than any of us.

One of the ways in which teleology is self-destructive is that in an "explosive holist" framework, quantity of life is more important than quality of life, which is ultimately how the proliferation of life becomes a death drive. We see this confirmed in climate change. The problem is that the concept of life is not so stark. This is where Morton introduces (or parlays Derrida's concept of) spectrality, which is unfortunately very muddy.

Spectrality is a "shimmering" an "X-quality", and a superpower. It is the paradox that something is exactly what it is, yet not exactly what it appears. At the same time it is the potentiality of the future, "givenness", the curiosity of ennui, the uncanny, and more. At the very least, I agree with Morton that humans are haunted. By the weight of dead traditions, the potentiality of the future, and the halo of nonhuman entities with which we are independent in the "symbiotic real". Solidarity is, for Morton, recognizing this spectrality. Recognizing our interdependence with nonhumans is part of this.

Most of the book meditates on these ideas and a few more. There is also a fascinating and utterly unnecessary analysis of the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar. The ideas double back on themselves, and at some points one wonders if one has accidentally jumped backwards a few chapters. You haven't, it's just that the structure of this book is not exactly linear. It's more of an improvised homily than anything.

But its maddening structure is not the worst part of this book. In fact, at times I found the structure to be quite beautiful, as there is a poetic interconnectedness to it all. A total lack of direction combined with the almost imperceptible feeling of progress -- it was almost dreamlike at times.

The style of Morton's prose -- which blends high culture, with low culture, abstract philosophy-jargon with slang and breezy conversation -- is not that fresh or new anymore. At times it is genuinely exciting, and there are nuggets of profundity in this book, as you would find in any two hundred page work of philosophy. But Timothy Morton is not Nietzsche. Most of the time, however, it is cheeky to the point of irritating, especially when it is totally opaque. This is especially maddening when the book takes a turn for the New Age, as Morton recklessly flirts with exponents, quantum physics, Möbius strips, the continuum hypothesis (which one of you told him about the continuum hypothesis?!) and other quantum spirituality Deepak Chopra clichés, never making it totally clear how serious he intends these metaphors to be.

It's not that the writing style is obfuscating here -- that would imply there is something to be obfuscated. Instead, Morton seems content to half-commit to half-positing a half-idea, and let you do the rest of the work for him. Among some of the most irritating Zen koans here:

"X just is Y" (usually not given with any serious explanation)
"X is retweeting Y" (Kant retweeting Hegel....it just makes one cringe a bit, doesn't it?)
“Greater than” must mean “having more qualities than.” “More real than” must mean “having more essence than.”(Dodgy ontology and metaphysics)
"X is the cool kids version of Y"
"X is cheap" (Probably the most maddening of them all, as the central thesis of the book is that 'solidarity is cheap', but it unclear whether cheap means abundant, easy to access, easy to cultivate, or something else entirely)
"An idea exists in the same way as a quasar" (Yet more dodgy metaphysics)
"X is a twelve inch remix of Y"
"X exists in the VIP lounges of agricultural-age religions"

While Humankind does occasionally reach the exalted key of joyful, playful philosophical theorizing, its flimsy foundations, sloppy methodology, and tendencies towards philistinic pseudo-profundity ultimately render the whole book more of a gesture towards a theory of solidarity with nonhumans than what it could have been, a thought-provoking and thorough manifesto. There is enough philosophy in here to keep the curious reader entertained (and it is probably worth skimming the bibliography just for culture -- Morton is nothing if not a skilled name-dropper), and equally enough sketchiness to keep a disciplined and clear thinker agitated. (less)
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Jul 12, 2018Bruce rated it really liked it
As a representative of OOO- Object Oriented Ontology- Timothy Morton rejects "Correlationalism" which is the tendency for Philosophy to persistently have only two options - Is reality a construct of the human mind? or is the human mind the product of physical substantial objectivity? A third consideration is a de-anthropocentric approach where all objects, from the smallest particles to the great galaxies and ourselves have a mutual referential interplay. That is to say my perception of the flower is of no less or of more importance than the flowers' perception of me. Whether connected to the above or not, he also dismisses what he calls "hyperobjects" - not too dissimilar to the post modern dismissal of the meta-narrative. A hyperobject is any whole that is considered to be greater than the sum of its parts - "Nature" being one. Timothy's argument is that these two perceptions limit the contribution we can have towards ecology. Only as we truly relate to objects and participate from a bottom up rather than a top down approach can we make a positive contribution. There is much more to this book and apologies for any misrepresentation(s) I may have made. I read it a couple of months ago.
My personal interest is from a theistic perspective. Timothy quite clearly dismisses the idea of God as just one more hyperobject. I think (at least my idea of) God can cope with that. For me the greatness of God does not consist in bigness but in how small God can become yet remain God. I believe fully in the bottom up idea - hence the incarnation.
The deanthropocentrism is also containable within my theology. While I still believe that man is created in God's image I do believe that religious man has falsely interpreted this to mean that humankind is more important - more valuable - and the rest of creation is a mere commodity to that end. But if we take the words of Christ who said "let him who is the greatest become the least - become the servant of all" seriously, then the closer we are to God's image the least we become. The outcome should be that complexity carries with it responsibility and this in Christian terms means to become a humble servant of creation - to care selflessly for all objects.
I understand the god that Timothy is dismissing but there are different ways to view God that actually affirm his concerns and contribute to his aims in this book.
That whole is not greater than the sum of its parts is an oversimplification although I believe that what Timothy is saying "What if we consider the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts". That said I would say that the whole does not needto be greater than the sum of its parts but it can be. Take England football team last night each individual player was brilliant but as a team they just didn't work well. On other occasions the team worked well and produced something that exceeded the sum of the individuals. So that would need looking into (Perhaps he did - sorry if that's the case)
At the end of the book I became aware of the significance of the title "Humankind" (Trudeaux would be impressed!) and the meaning implied by the word "kind" as in kinship as in mutual reciprocal participation in this thing we call life illiciting respect and compassion.
I've missed loads out and made considerable highlights which I will have to go back to but for all its complexity and quirky terms, whatever the motive, I have come away enlightened, informed and thinking in more depth, my part in the cosmos and my faith in God. For that I am grateful :) (less)
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Mar 17, 2019Owen Moorhead rated it it was ok
I considered awarding this an extra star for chutzpah, but I couldn't do it.

This is a book that defines "spectre", "rock", and "solidarity", but neglects to explain a sentence like, "In the world of macro-Hegel, the Slinky is implausibly capable of going upstairs." At one point, I forgot what page I was on and skipped ahead fifty pages or so without realizing it. Now that I've finished, I'm still not sure if I actually read the whole book. It's a mess.

I should add that I am sympathetic to many of the arguments made by Morton in this book, so I was rooting for him.

But it's just such a bewildering barrage of references, "cool professor"-speak ("Micro-Hegel is generally awesome", "Infrasound is a Tolstoy novel about mountains, oceans, and deserts", etc.), and then at the end there's an extended exegesis of "Interstellar" that is totally incomprehensible. That was really the final nail in the coffin of the book for me, because I don't care what Tim Morton says, that movie was terrible.

I picked up this book because I was interested in a book about "Solidarity with Non-Human People." Maybe I'm a dummy. This book is about many things, but perhaps least of all "solidarity with non-human people." Rarely have I felt so keenly the truth of the old saw about judging books by their covers.

Having read one other of his books ("Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence"--again, great title), I am beginning to suspect that he has a hat full of cool book titles and subtitles and chooses them at random whenever he finishes a new one.

I'll probably keep reading his books, though. (less)
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Apr 04, 2019b rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction, theory
I’ve read a lot of Morton, and probably with the huge mistake of not totally immersing myself in Graham Harman and the other OOO-types in advance. I might actually hate Morton, but also find myself bursting out in laughter when he writes things like “again I must be the devil,” because I think he somehow knows how much I hate him, and I realize now that a lot of what he is doing is “playing.” I’m sure some folks have spent careers trying to “debug” Marxism, and done so a lot less successfully than Morton does (or doesn’t? It doesn’t seem like he’s quite all the way there in this, but it was still nice following his ideas in this book, particularly as it reads more coherently than Dark Ecology did). Morton cuts to the chase when necessary, makes the best of a discipline obsessed with jargon by making his own candied-buzzwords (his are always the sweetest), and by pointing out some things that we really need to remember when we “do theory,” most importantly, that dumb questions are really important, maybe most important. I can see the appeal for those who love him, and I can see how folks who are tangled up in the wires of obfuscation and purity-politics and finding truth in one clear philosophical line are completely flabbergasted by Morton’s appeal. Not sure I can recommend it, but if any of this sounds appealing, why don’t you give it a go? (less)
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Jan 09, 2018M rated it it was amazing
Shelves: anthropocene, favorite, sociology, non-fiction, recommended
Perforated, fuzzy, broken & spectral: that’s how the arguments of this book are, making its way through continental philosophy and Marxism to insert non-humans, only to argue, ultimately, that there’s no such thing as solidarity without non-humans anyway. Reading it is a game: annoying, because you don’t know the rules, but nonetheless, fascinating. Morton keeps being in conversation with this, and that, from critical theorists to pop icons, jumping and jumping, unable to be grasped, constantly unfollowing himself from the reader’s understanding. But for all that it tortured me with, I loved it. I both believe it and not believe it. It makes such great arguments: adding non-humans to marxist theory, ontologically unpinning species (and thus race, and racism, too), accepting the fuzziness of the world (its spectral x-being), but also its toughness (it’s object oriented, not socially constructed), strongly in favor of an implosive holism (one that isn’t a whole greater than the sum of its parts, but less – subscendence), and pushing (rocking) against anthropocentrism. But also, it’s not very serious, it’s rather playful, which is, maybe, the point, or part of it, anyway. Is it like this so it cannot be contradicted? Maybe. Morton would love that, getting into a space into which contradictions are possible, and present – an excluded middle. Getting us into a loop, or brain-fucked, or preferably both, but in a beautiful, disgusting kind of way.

<< Love is not straight, because reality is not straight. Everywhere, there are curves and bends, things veer. Per-ver-sion. En-vir-onment. These terms come from the verb „to veer”. To veer, to swerve toward: am I choosing to do so or am I being pulled? Free will is overrated. I do not make decisions outside the Universe and then plunge in, like an Olympic diver. I am already in. >>
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Jul 13, 2019Juan Pablo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I believe the role of philosophy has always been to question, to reflect, to envision all possibilities and the possibilities of those possibilities. To embrace and accept paradoxes and that nothing is certain or “written in stone”.
We live on an age where nothing is valid if it’s not “scientifically” proven. We also live on an age where we accumulate massive evidence of what fits our prejudice.
I felt that this work humbles ya down to where philosophy should. It points out how anthropocentrism clouds our vision in a new and fresh way. Even pointing out how philosophy can also be biased by our anthropocentrism and even envisioning anthropocentrism is in itself anthropogenic because we can never escape our “human” point of view. But like I said before. Philosophy should embrace paradoxes. It’s is its job.
I believe that philosophy is not out there to show us the answers, but to ask questions. Questions that disrupt our certainties and truths not validate them.
I’ve seen people slam this book because it has “over the top” or “pretentious” language to “say what has already been said” and that it provides no evidence of what it implies. Well. Sorry to disappoint you guys, this book is not a scientific paper. It embraces the philosophical paradox that what it implies might not be 100% true or factual but makes the observation that paradoxes are ok. We don’t need to fix on a law of non-contradiction. It’s a book about the paradox of acceptors anthropocentrism exists while looking at it through an anthropocentric lens.
It’s ok to accept paradoxes. That’s philosophy’s role. (less)
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Humankind by Timothy Morton review – no more leftist defeatism, everything is connected | Philosophy books | The Guardian

Humankind by Timothy Morton review – no more leftist defeatism, everything is connected | Philosophy books | The Guardian

Humankind by Timothy Morton review – no more leftist defeatism, everything is connected
A bracing book from the fashionably wild thinker embraces anarchist and Buddhist ideas in an argument for solidarity with all that exists

Beguiling, intellectually reckless and restless … Tim Morton. Photograph: Max Burkhalter/The Guardian



Stuart Jeffries
Wed 23 Aug 2017 16.30 AEST


In 2015, Cecil the lion was shot with an arrow by a big-game hunting American called Walter Palmer. Facebook and Twitter erupted in outrage against the insouciant dentist, UN resolutions were passed, Palmer was stalked and his extradition to face charges in Zimbabwe demanded.

Timothy Morton takes Palmer’s flash-mob shaming as a hopeful sign. We may be living in dark times – the epoch he and other radical thinkers call the Anthropocene, in which our species has committed ecological devastation, presided over the sixth mass extinction event (animal populations across the planet have decreased by as much as 80% since 1900) and got our degraded kicks by offing lovely lions. But, in a dialectical twist, humans are becoming so aware of what we’ve done that we are now capable of bringing about change.

Morton sets out a political programme of liberating humans from the “patriarchal, hierarchical, heteronormative possibility space” that has constrained our species ever since our ancestors started farming in Mesopotamia 400 generations ago. It was then, he asserts, that humans started hubristically carving up the biosphere. Ever since, he contends, our very thinking has become rapaciously binary. Consider the Platonic distinction between body and soul. Consider Descartes’ implicit suggestion that other animals are furry robots. Consider what Dostoevsky saw when he visited Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace: he found in it a metaphor for western civilisation, an immune system that brought the world’s most diverting flora, fauna and industrial products under one roof, while whatever remained outside (war, genocide, slavery, unpleasant tropical diseases, human waste, expendable life forms) dwindled into irrelevance.

We have airbrushed out the historical disaster Morton calls “the Severing”, a name that gives his argument a voguish Game of Thrones-like vibe. “The Severing,” he explains, “is a catastrophe: an event that does not take place ‘at’ a certain ‘point’ in linear time, but a wave that ripples out in many dimensions, and in whose wake we are caught.” The severing resembles the central trauma of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels. In that imagined world, children each have their daemons – until, that is, organised religion (evil Nicole Kidman in the film adaptation The Golden Compass) brutally severs the symbiotic pair in order to subjugate humanity. For Morton, our task is to become haunted beings again, possessed by a spectral sense of our connectedness to everything on this planet.
Cecil the lion in Hwange national park, Zimbabwe. Photograph: Reuters


How might we do that? Morton here attempts to retool Marxism to accommodate oppressed non-humans. Tough gig: Marx’s thought is, you’d think, hopelessly anthropocentric, a philosophical artefact of the Severing. Morton demurs. His book is about adding “modes of anarchist thought back into Marxism, like the new medical therapy that consists of injecting fecal matter into another’s ailing guts”.

His fecal shock therapy sometimes seems like a quack cure, but one disarming aspect of Morton is his hopefulness. He loathes the smug leftist defeatism of his academic colleagues – their sense that capitalism won, that Earth is done, and all that remains is for self-serving professors to ringfence their critiques of neoliberalism and ecological ruination inside intellectual cordons sanitaires. In the Anthropocene, he realises, everyone is implicated. Even theory professors don’t have clean hands.

Against defeatism, he pits hope. The size and scope of the outrage over Cecil’s killing was, he argues, very different from, say, the Save the Whale protests of the 1970s. “The year 2015 was when a very large number of humans figured out they had more in common with a lion than a dentist,” he claims.


Without wishing to sound pre-fecally defeatist, though, I’m doubtful. I don’t think the reaction to Cecil’s killing suggests we have anything significant in common with lions. Rather, the flash-mob shaming might well be thought of as projected self-loathing premised on realising that Palmer is the barbarous flipside to what we call human civilisation.



'A reckoning for our species': the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene

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In his earlier book Dark Ecology Morton was on to something like this. He reflected that in Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller Blade Runner, the protagonist Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) comes to suspect he might be the enemy he has been ordered to hunt down. Humanity in the Anthropocene is like Deckard: we realise with – ideally, revolution-catalysing – horror that we are the problem.

There’s another possibility Morton too quickly dismisses. Zambia’s tourism minister Jean Kapata had a point when she suggested the reaction to Cecil’s slaying showed westerners care more about African animals than African humans. No matter. We should, Morton argues in this exasperating, beguiling, intellectually reckless and restless book, have solidarity with non-humans – not just with charismatic megafauna such as Cecil, but algae, cutlery, rocks. This follows from his adherence to object-oriented ontology, the argument that nothing has privileged status and philosophers exist equally with Xboxes and excrement.


That’s right – excrement. Even the stuff we throw away demands our solidarity. “The waste products in Earth’s crust are also the human in this expanded, spectral sense,” Morton writes. “One’s garbage doesn’t go ‘away’ – it just goes somewhere else.” Good point, though I’d like him to argue that point in front of those living through the second month of Birmingham’s refuse collectors’ strike this summer.

Morton’s garbage is like Freud’s return of the repressed, in that it comes back to bite us in the philosophical ass: what we excrete remains part of us, as do the plastic bottles on landfill sites we thought we’d got rid of. Even more chasteningly, he insists that humans are not just composed of stardust (as Joni Mitchell once suggested), but of viruses, rubbish and bacteria. One-third of baby milk, for instance, is not digestible by the baby; rather it feeds the bacteria that coats the intestines with “immunity-bestowing film”.

But how can we have solidarity with non-humans? One way, Morton suggests, is to abandon the anthropocentric idea that thinking is the leading communication mode. “Brushing against, licking or irradiating are ask access modes as valid (or as invalid ) as thinking,” he writes. If he really wants solidarity with Cecil and algae, he should publish – somehow! – an edition of Humankind that can be accessed by licking, floating through, brushing against.
‘Like Harrison Ford’s Deckard in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner we realise with horror that we are the problem.’ Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

Morton, wonderfully, doesn’t balk at the nutty repercussions of his interdependence thesis (what he calls “implosive holism”). He asks at the outset: “Am I simply a vehicle for numerous bacteria that inhabit my microbiome? Or are they hosting me?” In what he calls the symbiotic real, it’s not clear who is host and who parasite. All this recalls how Montaigne thought himself out of anthropocentrism with his remark: “When I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me?”


Morton, British-born professor of English at Rice University in Texas, is a fashionable thinker, the Montaigne of the Anthropocene – so much so that he was recently honoured with an appearance in Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner. True, he’s anathematised by philosophy departments for the wild thinking that makes him attractive to artworld hipsters such as Björk, Olafur Eliasson, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno. And yes, he may be a hypocrite (he racked up 350,000 air miles last year while hectoring us non-non-humans on our ecological crimes). But his developing anarchic communism is bracing. Here he heretically argues that consumerism, far from marking humanity’s spiritual ruination (that default critique of our fate under late capitalism beloved of Frankfurt School miseryboots), might help promote ecological awareness, since it involves allowing ourselves to be haunted by things so that we can become the spectral humans he yearns us to be.
Morton's wild thinking has attracted Björk, Olafur Eliasson, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno

Here too he suggests we scrap the concept of “nature” and reclaim the upper scales of ecological coexistence, rather than – as the blurb deliriously has it – let agrochemical company “Monsanto and cryogenically suspended billionaires define them and own them”. You don’t have to holiday at Center Parcs to realise that “nature” is a hyperreal simulation devised to blind us to the “agrilogistic” rape of the Earth, but it might help you get inside Morton’s mindset.

He is hardly the only philosopher to attempt to overcome anthropocentrism. Jeremy Bentham once devised an empathy test: “The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?” Can rocks suffer? Frankly I don’t know. Maybe I should ask my bowel bacteria. What I do know is that for Morton that kind of test is anathema in his quest for solidarity with non-humans, since such utilitarianism is too mired in agrilogistic liberal economics to serve as revolutionary ally.

Instead, he borrows from Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin the idea of “mutual aid” to flesh out of what he calls towards the end of the book “kindness”. Kropotkin detected kinship between how ants and beetles bury their dead and how working-class Russians co-operated. All act not out of empathy, but from something more basic which Morton describes as “the zero-degree cheapest coexistence mode, something you rely on when all else fails”. If this is kindness, Tim, it’s not kindness as I’ve hitherto known it.

Morton’s kindness is to do with being permeated by other beings, in recognising there is no inside-outside binary. The new human he yearns for passively allows him or herself to be infected by the healing solidarity of non-humans.


I struggle, too, with his theory of passivity with which he ends the book. He calls it “rocking”, and it derives from his reflections on Buddhism. “This theory of action has to do with a highly necessary queering of the theistic categories of active versus passive.” Rocking involves a quivering awareness of the interconnectedness of everything. We may think – in our heteronormative, hierarchical way – that rocks are inert, but really if we allowed ourselves to, we might realise that even rocks, well, rock. Morton isn’t talking about mindfulness – which he, I think rightly, takes as a lie to keep willing subjects working at being calm and thus keeping capitalism’s foot on our collective throat – but about a pleasantly mystic sensual communion with all that is.

How does passive rocking help bring about communism? Should we throw rocks at our oppressors or refrain from doing so because it would hurt their (the rocks’) feelings? I don’t know. I’m doubtful too whether Morton’s ardent book is sufficient to the moment in which any communism is outsmarted (maybe that should be outstupided) by Trump’s neoliberalism. But that’s probably because I’m hobbled by the very mindset Morton here excoriates, namely “retweeting the agricultural age religion that is gumming up our ways of imagining a different future”. Sorry for doing that, professor.

Humankind is published by Verso. To order a copy for £14.44 (RRP £16.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99