Bruno Latour’s work, today becoming increasingly influential in philosophical circles, represents a clear challenge to prevailing philosophical accounts of the relation between human subjectivity and the natural world. The ‘political ecology’ which Latour sets out in works such as We Have Never Been Modern and more extensively in The Politics of Nature is a call to arms to rethink concepts of nature taken for granted ever since the time of Kant. Yet despite its apparent novelty, and despite its apparent break (...) with post-Kantian continental philosophy, Latour’s thinking often unwittingly reworks philosophical moves made within that tradition, even during Kant’s lifetime, specifically in the movement known as Naturphilosophie. Bringing to light the elective affinities between Latour’s ideas and those of Naturphilosophie, this article suggests that the former unconsciously rehearses key tenets of the latter, in particular the claims made by Schelling against Kant. Moreover, Latour will be seen to succumb to the problems which a subsequent developer of Naturphilosophie—Hegel—would identify in Schelling’s own conception of nature. Finally, whilst Latour offers an apparently compelling alternative to notions of subject and object, free-will and mechanism, along with the conceptual separation of humans from the natural world, his thought often fails to achieve the genuine critique that would be adequate to comprehending these oppositions, and to explaining the ecological crisis in which both humans and nonhumans are caught up. (shrink)

In a radio broadcast from 1933, Martin Heidegger explains his decision to refuse a professorship at the University of Berlin by defending a philosophy that he says is rooted in the ‘provinces’. The broadcast - entitled ‘Creative Landscape’ - sees Heidegger on the cusp of the ‘turn’ in his thought from the existentialism of Being and Time (1927) to the ‘poetic thinking’ of his work from the mid-1930s onwards. It is a fascinating yet neglected snapshot of his thought at a (...) crucial historical moment, and also reveals some of the deeper problems raised by his philosophy - his rejection of epistemology, his anti-modernism, and the contradictions of fundamental ontology itself. The present paper argues that Heidegger’s refusal of the professorship reveals a deep antagonism between his philosophy of Being and the public sphere of the city, and highlights the weakness of Heidegger’s thinking when faced with some of the central problems of modernity. Key Words: alienation • city • Heidegger • modernity • provinces • public sphere • reification • sociology • Tönnies. (shrink)

In a radio broadcast from 1933, Martin Heidegger explains his decision to refuse a professorship at the University of Berlin by defending a philosophy that he says is rooted in the ‘provinces’. The broadcast - entitled ‘Creative Landscape’ - sees Heidegger on the cusp of the ‘turn’ in his thought from the existentialism of Being and Time (1927) to the ‘poetic thinking’ of his work from the mid-1930s onwards. It is a fascinating yet neglected snapshot of his thought at a (...) crucial historical moment, and also reveals some of the deeper problems raised by his philosophy - his rejection of epistemology, his anti-modernism, and the contradictions of fundamental ontology itself. The present paper argues that Heidegger’s refusal of the professorship reveals a deep antagonism between his philosophy of Being and the public sphere of the city, and highlights the weakness of Heidegger’s thinking when faced with some of the central problems of modernity. (shrink)