Ecological Ethics and Living Subjectivity in Hegel's Logic: The Middle Voice of Autopoietic Life

339 Pages·2014·8.74 MB·English

by  Wendell Kisner

E cological Ethics and Living Subjectivity in
Hegel’s L ogic
E cological Ethics and
Living Subjectivity in
Hegel’s L ogic
T he Middle Voice of Autopoietic Life
W endell K isner
A thabasca University, Canada
© Wendell Kisner 2014
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F or the Deb
C ontents
A cknowledgments x
1 I ntroduction: Life, Mechanism, and Dialectical Logic 1
O ntological problems 3
O ntological problems resolved 5
E thical problems 6
E thical problems resolved 7
T he Hegelian contribution 8
L ate-twentieth-century Spinozism 9
I mmanent logic 1 4
T he middle voice 1 8
A philosophy of nature for today 1 9
T he rise of mechanism in the modern period 2 1
2 L ife in the Middle Voice 2 9
T he middle voice in linguistics 3 3
P hilosophical implications of the middle voice 3 7
L ife as medial hypostasis 3 8
M edial dialectic 4 5
3 T he Emergence of Life from Mechanico-Chemical Processes 5 6
I ntroduction to Hegelian logic 5 6
T he ontological character of logical determinacy 6 1
A brief overview of the S cience of Logic 6 5
F rom mechanism to life 7 7
1 . Mechanism 8 0
2 . Chemism 8 9
3 . Teleology 9 5
4 . Living hypostasis 1 01
V italism, mechanism, and reductive accounts 1 02
4 T he Biologic of Life 1 07
L ife 1 08
T he organic individual 1 09
S ensibility: organic receptivity 113
vii
viii Contents
I rritability: from the organism to the environment 1 15
S elf-reproduction 1 22
E cological niches 1 26
A ssimilation 1 27
S ymbiosis 1 28
D eath 1 33
R eproduction and species 1 36
L iving cognition 1 44
M edial hypostatic life and autopoiesis 1 49
5 A n Ecological Ethic 1 54
P roblems that have arisen in environmental ethics 1 55
A nimal rights 1 56
H olism, deep ecology, and attitude adjustment 1 58
E cofeminism 1 59
E cological holism and the land ethic 1 61
T he nature/artifice dualism 1 63
C ommon problems 1 66
T he ecological ethic 1 67
6 F rom Ontological Determinacy to Natural Contingency 1 80
F rom logic to nature: other approaches 1 81
O ntological determinacy as nature 1 93
1 . The absolute idea 1 94
2 . The absolute idea as nature 1 96
3 . The diastasis of identity 2 00
4 . Nature as a sphere of contingency 2 04
5 . The big picture 2 10
6 . Thinking nature: method and content 2 13
A philosophy of nature for today 2 16
7 T he Biologic of Autopoiesis 2 24
M aturana and the biology of cognition 2 24
A utopoiesis 233
L iving autonomy 2 35
M echanistic bias 2 36
R elational self-subsistence 2 37
A llopoietic and autopoietic machines 2 39
T eleology 2 41
F oundational vs. non-foundational logics 2 42
Contents ix
H igher-order autopoietic systems 2 47
A utopoietic unity as an ontological determinacy 2 52
T he ontogenic solipsism of autopoiesis 2 55
A utopoiesis after Maturana 2 58
L ife as surplus of significance 2 63
A Hegelian clarification 2 70
M ortal life 2 75
P hilosophy of nature revisited 2 77
8 C onclusion 2 80
N otes 2 86
B ibliography 3 15
I ndex 3 23