Full Description
Contemporary environmental crises and general feelings of estrangement from the earth and its creatures can be traced, at least in part, to deficiencies in intimacy. This book begins from Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of the origins of animal desire, then advocates for transformation of the human-animal relation in a manner that pushes further toward ethical conclusions than did Merleau-Ponty himself. Shifting from analysis first in an aesthetic, then in an ethical, and finally in an ethico-religious register, with contemporary environmental concerns in mind, it charts a path for healing the human-animal relation both within, with respect to one's own animality, and without, with respect to animals of other species, based on the maturation of desire from eros to environmental responsibility.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Human Place in the Cosmos
Part I
1. Eros After Nature: Solicitation Between 'Speech' and Discourse
I. Two Problems and Two Critiques
II. The Solicitation-and-Response Relation
2. Animal Before Thought: Merleau-Ponty and the Maturation of Desire
I. Archeology and Teleology
II. The Maturation of Desire
3. Estranged Kinship: Empathy and Animal Desire in Merleau-Ponty
I. The Subsistence of Empathy
II. The Sublimation of Animal Desire
Part II
4. The Sensible Origins of Reflection: Levinasian Criticisms of Merleau-Ponty's Late Ontology
I. An Irreducible Remainder
II. The Spark of Reflection
5. The Ontological Origins of Sensibility: Phenomenological Ontology in an Aesthetic Register
I. Cézanne's Inhuman Gaze
II. Brute, or Anonymous Being
6. Seeds of Ecological Selfhood: Phenomenology of the Animal in an Ethical Register
I. The Paradox of Elemental Alterity
II. The Transformation of Estranged Kinship
Part III
7. Animauxdenial: On Nature and the Animal as (In)Difference
I. Tragic, or Impossible Desire
II. The Wild Animal(s) Within
8. The Barbarian Principle: Befriending the Philosopher's Shadow
I. Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
II. Disentangling Merleau-Ponty's Reading of Schelling
9. Dynamic Integration: Becoming Animal, Becoming Human
I. Problematizing Indistinction
II. Subordinating Greed to Love
Bibliography
Index
