The Animate World: Posthuman Ontologies

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

While the book affirms both the normative imperative and technological tendency that humanism is unsustainable and that technological developments are cumulatively pointing towards a surpassing of the human, conceptually and physically, it argues for the necessity of a post-humanism grounded in a vital ontology, in contrast to the nihilist ontological positions and assumptions of a range of existing post and anti-humanisms.

The post-human ontology, based in process philosophy, is offered as an alternative philosophical grounding for post-humanism, for an ethics and politics of ecological flourishing, rather than exploitation of nature. Sean Watson critiques the existing nihilist ontological approaches to the post-human, which he argues are complicit with neoliberal, digital capitalism, and its ideological justifications. In doing so he conceives of an ontology of generative ethics and politics, capable of addressing the overwhelming accumulation of crises that Bernard Stiegler identified as the destruction of the future.

Author Bio

Sean Watson is Associate Head of the Department of Health and Social Science at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. He has been an academic for over 30 years. He has taught, and occasionally published on, aspects of European philosophy, and metaphysics throughout that time. He lives on an old Scottish fishing boat.