February 2009 Archives

Mr. Hibbard-Swanson is committed to challenging his students to think more critically about the world in which they live. Although he recognizes that philosophy requires specific skills--the ability to argue coherently, read carefully and write effectively--his vision of a philosophical education centers around, as he says, "making easy things difficult." By this he means engaging with his students in a dialogue with central figures in the history of philosophy in such a way that settled beliefs become open questions for students. The curriculum of each of his courses reflects this commitment both to the specific skills of philosophy and the larger purpose of philosophical education. He works very hard to bring ideas and concepts articulated by philosophers to bear on concrete social and politics questions of the day. As a result, students are made to feel the relevance of what they are doing in the classroom to the wider world in which they live. 

The letters from students indicate that Jared is a very conscientious teacher who works constantly and intentionally to improve his teaching. He is clearly succeeding in making easy things difficult, as one of his students writes: "Sometimes I would leave class with the sheer joy and satisfaction of discovery through thought, and sometimes I left class frustrated and pondering more questions than I had entered with."

Self-Realization or Self-Fashioning? Spinoza, Deep Ecology and the Problem of Ecological Subjectivity

In opposition to the "shallow" environmental movement, "deep" ecologists such as Arne Naess have sought not only to articulate new ecological norms, but also to found these norms upon a quasi-Spinozist philosophy of self-realization. While mainstream environmental ethicists attempt to settle upon an understanding of the relative moral worth of different natural beings in abstraction from our relationship to these beings, deep ecologists argue that these relationships, which constitute the ecological self, are ethically prior to a rational articulation of moral principles. If new ecological values are ever to take hold, we must first seek to unsettle the prevailing non-ecological sense of self.

Naess' strategy of turning ethical theory back upon the constitution of the human subject provides an interesting counterpoint to many of the prevailing concerns in the field of environmental ethics, forcing debates over abstract values to return to the ground of our lived experience of the world. However, Naess' static metaphysical vision of the fully-realized self, derived from his idiosyncratic interpretation of Spinoza's Ethics, may still prove insufficiently attentive to the contingent and situated nature of ecological experience. In this paper I argue that Naess does not unsettle our sense of self and world enough.

The principal aims of my paper, therefore, are twofold. First, I seek to critically examine the quasi-Spinozist theory of subjectivity that underlies the deep ecological ethic of self-realization, drawing attention to its static conception of ecological phenomena and selfhood. Second, relying on Deleuze's interpretation of Spinoza, I attempt to unearth in Spinoza's text an alternate ethic of self-fashioning, rooted in a more dynamic, material understanding of ecological subjectivity that is hopefully more attentive to the shifting and uncertain nature of emerging ecological phenomena.