Geography is experiencing a ‘moral turn’ in its research interests and practices. There is also a flourishing interest in animal geographies that intersects this turn, and is concurrent with wider scholarly efforts to reincorporate animals and nature into our ethical and social theories. This article intervenes in a dispute between Michael Dear and Richard Symanski. The dispute is over the culling of wild horses in Australia, and I intervene to explore how geography deepens our moral understanding of the animal/human dialectic. (...) I begin by situating the inquiry into ethics and animals in geography. Next, I provide a synopsis of Dear and Symanski's comments on ‘animal rights’, followed in turn by discussions of moral value and value paradigms. I then introduce a value paradigm termed geocentrism as a geographical account of our moral relations to animals. Finally, I discuss the wider significance of this debate for geographical ethics, moral philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

It is clear that we have to do something in our time concerning global warming yet before we can actually change the world, we must first understand our world. According to Heidegger, technology itself is not good or bad, but the problem is, that technological thinking (calculative thinking) has become the only form of thinking. Heidegger saw that the essence of technology nowadays is enframing – Ge-stell, which means that everything in nature is ‘standing-reserve’ (Bestand). Enframing (as apparatus) is one (...) way of uncovering, which for Heidegger meant truth. Truth can appear in many ways and the danger is that this truth of representational-calculative thinking becomes the only truth. We claim that the calculative way of thinking must be changed and we posit that Gelassenheit (slow thinking, releasement, letting-go) is the remedy. It does not mean some kind of mysticism or irrationality. The notion of Gelassenheit includes the idea of to let learn. We as teachers and educators have to learn how to think outside of the technological ‘Ge-stell’ and start thinking and acting in radically new ways. Like Arne Naes and Michael Zimmerman we connect the overcoming of technological ‘Ge-stell’ with so called deep ecology. We have to ‘learn to think’ and act within the deep ecology. We call for an educational ecological imperative. Every teacher and educationalist has to think what they can do (not as private person but as professionals) in order to prevent the coming eco-catastrophe. (shrink)

Although transpersonal psychologies of self realization emphasize individual development, earlier shamanic traditions also showed a central societal aspect and group based consciousness. Indeed, many have understood the transpersonal movement as developing towards an abstract globalized neo-shamanism. That altered states of consciousness, whether as integrative realizations of the numinous or as dissociative “hypnoid” states, could be felt and shared collectively was a familiar concept to the first generation of sociologists, who saw all consciousness as social and dialogic in form. Durkheim, in (...) particular, foresaw a globalized spirituality of the future, his “cult of man,” in which modern individuation would progress to the point where all we would have in common for the collective representations of spiritual awareness would be our shared sense of human beingness. This view foreshadowed De Chardin, and is presented explicitly or implicitly in Jung, Gurdjieff, Heidegger, Maslow, and Almaas. The implications of a societal, collective face of transpersonalism for a future planetary spirituality are pursued in terms of both a global ecological consciousness and the potential transpersonal significance of SETI. (shrink)

The consumerist lifestyle of modernity has had a detrimental impact on the environment. In part, this is supposed by the traditional philosophical conceptualisation of subjectivity, which privileges human subjects from surrounding objects. Concern over our attitude to the environment has been present from the beginning of civilisation and particularly since the emergence of the industrial revolution. This thesis traces a genealogy of these concerns, from the Romantics, to 20th century philosophers such as Heidegger, through the political movements of the 1960-1980s (...) and the recognition of pollution, resource depletion and climate change by pan global organisation from the 1980s to the present day. The changes in epistemology in the wide context of society have influenced the way environmental education has emerged. Philosophy informs the way we understand subjectivity, language, pedagogy, curriculum, and our understanding of the environment. Education also operates in a political context, and the concepts that inform policies permeate educational institutions. Heidegger’s philosophy engages with the scope of the environmental problem, offers a critique of modernity, develops a new conceptualisation of subjectivity and the relationship between humanity and Being, and an analysis of the impact modern technology has mediating that relationship. Heidegger began to develop his ideas on technology during the period between World Wars, in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. His philosophy was influenced by the Romantic Volk movement, and the ideas of Nietzsche, Spengler and Jünger. The tense political surroundings have influenced his thinking, in both constructive and detrimental ways. Heidegger remains one of the most influential philosophers to engage with the framework of technological modernity and its constraints on human subjectivity, and our way of relating to the earth. He challenges traditional ontology and epistemology. He raises the status of poetry from mere lyrical wordplay to means of developing a more authentic relationship between beings and Beings. I make a critical analysis of his philosophy, to distinguish the elements that remain inherently conservative and nationalistic from those that are immanently helpful in throwing light on the dilemma of modern life, and the escalating problem of environmental devastation. (shrink)

By revealing the centrality of stories to action, to social life and to inquiry together with the implicit assumptions in polyphonic stories about the nature of humans, of life and of physical reality, this paper examines the potential of stories to transform civilization. Focussing on the failure of environmentalists so far in the face of the global ecological crisis, it is shown how ethics and political philosophy could be reconceived and radical ecology reformulated and reinvigorated by appreciating and exploiting the (...) potential of stories. This could enable radical ecologists to effect the major social and economic changes necessary to meet the global ecological crisis. What we need, it is argued, is a new, polyphonic grand narrative. (shrink)