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Humankind

Solidarity with Nonhuman People

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Humankind

By: Timothy Morton
Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
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About this listen

A radical call for solidarity between humans and nonhumans

What is it that makes humans human? As science and technology challenge the boundaries between life and nonlife, 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.

©2017 Timothy Morton (P)2018 Tantor Consciousness & Thought Ecology Movements Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Philosophy Political Science Politics & Government Science Liberalism Socialism Capitalism
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Morton knows how to write philosophy in an exciting way. His style exploits where our minds are most flexible by tapping into the newest parts of common knowledge (e.g. knowledge about global warming, queerness, house music) and showing how the new fits better with his philosophy than with Plato’s, Heidegger’s or Lacan’s. He is fun, profound and ambitious even if sometimes rather quick to conclude that his point has been made, when in reality he has only alluded to an explanation without making it. I think his ontology is indeed an improvement on present day Lockeianism as well as Heidegger and Lacan - but I think his thought makes itself depend on the (to me rather silly) argument that if you don’t subscribe to his exact leftist environmental non-psychological, non-physicalist worldview, then you can’t contribute to the green cause. He is saying we have something in common with worms and rocks, but he is worried about the environmental mistakes we make if we read Hegelian or Foucauldian environmentalists rather than him. Here philosophers sometimes ought to count their friends, turn down the belief in the cause-and-effect relationship between the right fundamental concepts of being and the right political action, and be just a tad more humble.

Ambitious and vibrant ontology

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