On episode 53 for the Digital Dialogue, I am joined by Christopher Moore, Lecturer in Philosophy and Classics and Mediterranean Studies at Penn State.

Episode 52 of the Digital Dialogue was recorded at the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

I was joined by Sara Brill, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University and graduate from the Philosophy Department here at Penn State in 2004, where she wrote her dissertation with John Sallis entitled, Hygieia: Health and Medicine in Plato's Republic.

Sara has appeared on the Digital Dialogue a number of times including episodes: 

Digital Dialogue 52: Sara Brill on the Phaedo and Politics

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Episode 51 of the Digital Dialogue was recorded in Washington, D.C. at the Advancing Public Philosophy conference. Joining me are: Mark Fisher, Assistant Director of the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State, Ronald Sundstrom, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of San Francisco, Cori Wong, PhD Candidate, Penn State, Jessica Harper, Partner at Bodker, Ramsey, Andrews, Winograd, and Wildstein in Atlanta, and Vance Ricks, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Guilford College.

We focus our discussion on two workshops that focused on social media and public philosophy. The first, facilitated by Vance Ricks and Mark Fisher, focused on Social Media Ethics; the second, facilitated by me and Cori Wong, focused on Philosophy and the Digital Public.

Digital Dialogue 51: Mark Fisher, Ron Sundstrom, Cori Wong, Jessica Harper and Vance Ricks on the Digital Public

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Resources

Tom Tuozzo, Professor of Philosophy at Kansas University, joins me for episode 50 of the Digital Dialogue.  

Digital Dialogue 50: Tom Tuozzo on Aristotle's God and Efficient Causality

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This episode of the Digital Dialogue was recorded at the 11th annual meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society in Sundance, UT. On it, I am joined by Karen Gover and Kalliopi Nikolopoulou. 

the inaugural volume of its Symploke Studies in Contemporary Theory series.

Digital Dialogue 49: Karen Gover and Kalliopi Nikolopoulou on Poetic Pessimism

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John Lysaker, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, turns the tables on me for this episode of the Digital Dialogue. As promised in episode 16 in which John and I discussed his book, Emerson and Self-Culture, John took the lead to interview me after the panel on my book, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth, at the 2011 Ancient Philosophy Society in Sundance, UT.

Digital Dialogue 48: Christopher Long on Truth as Justice

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Here is a slideshow of pictures from episodes of the Digital Dialogue:

Claire Colebrook, Edwin Earl Sparks Professor of English here at Penn State joins me for episode 47 of the Digital Dialogue. Claire received her doctorate from the University of Edinburgh and was a Professor of Modern Literary Theory at the University of Edinburgh before joining the faculty of English at Penn State.

Her work focuses on contemporary European philosophy, feminist theory, literary theory, contemporary music, dance and visual culture and political theory. Let me name just a few of her books to give you a sense of the range of her expertise: New Literary Histories, Manchester UP 1997, Ethics and Representation, Edinburgh Press 1999, Understanding Deleuze, Allen and Unwin 2003, Irony and the Work of Philosophy, Nebraska 2002 and Milton, Evil and Literary History, Continuum 2008. She is currently working on two book projects, one on vitalism and another on William Blake and aesthetics.

But she joins me on the Digital Dialogue today to discuss an article she published in the London Consortium in 2006 entitled Happiness, Death and the Meaning of Life. In fact, this article was recommended to me by a loyal listener to the digital dialogue, Dirk Felleman, who suggested that Claire would be a great guest on the Digital Dialogue. So, of course, I wanted to respond to Dirk's deep engagement with the work we are doing on the Digital Dialogue, and I immediately extended an invitation to Claire, who has graciously accepted.

When Ross Wolfe asked if he could post an essay on the Digital Dialogue in honor of Earth Day, I was hesitant. Given his past participation on the blog under the pseudonym, Vox_Dei, I was not sure he was serious about engaging in a respectful, critical discussion of the central philosophical concerns of this blog.

Ross Wolfe is a graduate student in Soviet history at the University of Chicago, currently living in New York while doing research for his Master's thesis. In 2008, Ross graduated from Penn State University with a Bachelor's degree in both History and Philosophy. In December 2009, he became anonymously involved with Dr. Long's Digital Dialogue blog under the handle of "vox_dei." His main focus in research right now is on the early Soviet architectural avant-garde, but he is also interested in Marxism, critical theory, and their application to political issues past and present.

In light of the recent celebration of Earth Day, I have reposted an essay I wrote about a month ago, entitled "Man and Nature." With recent events in Japan and images of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami still fresh in our minds, it seems appropriate to revisit the old problem of humanity's relationship to nature. "Man and Nature" seeks to address this issue from a perspective that is clearly informed by the critical tradition of political Marxism and the Frankfurt School. It is divided into four sections, each of which builds on the results of those that precede it. 

The first section examines the shifting historical conception of "Nature" in society, analyzing the different ways in which the natural world has been understood down through the ages. From the most primitive societies to the Enlightenment, from the Romantics to the age of industrialism, all the way down to the present-day environmental movement, I attempt to trace the various ways in which Nature has manifested itself to society. From this, I deduce that Nature cannot be conceived merely as a self-enclosed entity, a Kantian Ding-an-Sich. Rather, it must be considered also as an historically variable object, the views of which tend to reflect the ideological superstructures of the age in which it is being contemplated. The challenge, then, is to conceive Nature as a fundamentally social problem. 

Section two covers the Marxist theory of man's alienation from nature under capitalism. It shows how the ever-increasing mediation of commodity society puts humanity at a further and further remove from the natural world, with which it was once so familiar. From Marx's early investigation of the corrosion of the organic relationships that existed in previous societies in his Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, I proceed to Georg Lukács' theorization of the creation of a virtual "second nature" out of a reification of society as it presently exists. Combining this with Marx's more mature critique of commodity fetishism in Capital, the question is posed: To what extent do the alterations and transformations in the constitution of society as "second nature" affect the original "first nature" out which the second was conceived? Dovetailing with the problem that with which we concluded the first section, it is further asked to what extent a radical social transformation (of "second nature") might also entail a radical transformation of the natural world. 

In section three of the essay, I explore the binary opposition of Nature and Culture through the lens of the structuralist anthropology of Lévi-Strauss. It also touches on the various ways in which the antithesis between the two terms has been denied, deconstructed, and dissolved by trying to assimilate one term to the other. In the end, it concludes that the opposition must be affirmed as an historical reality, though the antithesis must not be thought to be unbridgeable or indissoluble. The synchronic dialectical approach of structuralist linguistics and anthropology fails to capture the historical dimension of the opposition. It cannot recognize that this is an opposition that has come into being, and could just as easily pass into nothing. The diachronic dialectical approach of historical materialism is able to comprehend the problem as one which arose out of very definite historical conditions, and which has been exacerbated to such an extent under capitalism that it first presents itself as a problem to humanity. 

Finally, the fourth section of the essay undertakes a radical Marxist critique of the contemporary environmental movement. It breaks the Green movement into its main constituent parts so as to focus on each element in its individuality, as well as draw overarching themes that unite them all. It starts with a critical examination of the "go organic" and "buy fresh, buy local" locavore and urban agriculturalist tendencies, and then moves on to an analysis of the reification of Nature inherent in the deep ecology and permaculture currents. From there, the lifestyle politics of veganism, freeganism, and raw foodism is subjected to a devastating critique, topped off by a fierce polemic against the ecofeminist position. 

After taking a look at some of the more militant strains of eco-activism in the Green anarchist and anarcho-primitivist movements, the essay offers a final section assessing the results of the critique and exploring the prospects for a Marxist alternative. It concludes that the radical social transformation called for by Marxism must simultaneously involve a radical transformation of nature as it presently exists. Nature should not be seen as some sort of inviolable entity to be left untouched by human instrumentalization, but should rather come to be seen as an extension of the will of mankind. Only in this way can the alienation between man and nature be finally overcome. 

You can read the full essay on my blog, the charnal-house. Any comments or criticisms would be welcome, as well as any sort of feedback, positive or negative.

Cori Wong who is a graduate student in the department of Philosophy here at Penn State working on affective embodiment and oppression.

For episode 45 of the Digital Dialogue, I am joined by Josh Hayes who is currently a Lecturer at Santa Clara University. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University and Post-doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University and he graduated with his PhD from the New School in 2005.