The Ecological Thought

by Timothy Morton

In this passionate, lucid, and surprising book, Timothy Morton argues that all forms of life are connected in a vast, entangling mesh. This interconnectedness penetrates all dimensions of life. No being, construct, or object can exist independently from the ecological entanglement, Morton contends, nor does “Nature” exist as an entity separate from the uglier or more synthetic elements of life. Realizing this interconnectedness is what Morton calls the ecological thought. In three concise chapters, Morton investigates the profound philosophical, political, and aesthetic implications of the fact that all life forms are interconnected. As a work of environmental philosophy and theory, The Ecological Thought explores an emerging awareness of ecological reality in an age of global warming. Using Darwin and contemporary discoveries in life sciences as root texts, Morton describes a mesh of deeply interconnected life forms—intimate, strange, and lacking fixed identity. A “prequel” to his Ecology without Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (Harvard, 2007), The Ecological Thought is an engaged and accessible work that will challenge the thinking of readers in disciplines ranging from critical theory to Romanticism to cultural geography.

Genres: Philosophy, Ecology, Nonfiction, Theory, Environment, Nature, Science

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Timothy Bloxam Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They are the author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence; Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (with Marcus Boon and Eric Cazdyn); Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World; and other books.

Reviews

[xenia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, so Morton wants to challenge both environmentalism (for reifying nature the same way fascists do) and techno-optimism (for fully capitulating to capitalist realism). Anyone familiar with critical theory will know the argument. The nature-civilisation dichotomy is a recent invention perpetuated through colonial and capitalist discourses. Fictions, philosophical treatises, self-help manuals, paintings, murals, concerts, advertisements, Instagram, what have you. This is all fine and dandy. We should critique environmentalism for its obsession with returning to a pristine nature, as well as tech bros who think we can invent our way out of climate change without a radical transformation of our social relations.

Morton provides interesting counterpoints to environmentalist metaphysics. Indigenous peoples aren't living in a more immediate relation to the world (a racist concept even if resignified as desirable). Tibetan monks have a cosmology that transcends Earthly time and space, that understands meditation on Earth as a mere drop in a galactic ocean of other sentient meditating beings. Morton believes we need to let go of a localism that too often falls into fascistic sentimentality. Instead, we need to develop a global consciousness for an age of globalisation.

Morton cites Darwin as the progenitor of a worldview where nothing in nature is natural. Climates shift, continents break, beings mutate, without any teleological goal. Darwin was the first biologist to radically undermine the idea of a pristine nature. Instead, everything is strange, and the closer we look, the stranger things get. We're all trapped in this weird mesh of becoming, where there are only accidents that happen to work. We don't evolve towards efficiency, rather, many of our features come into being because they aren't deleterious. We contain excesses of pointless but fun wee traits. Contra fascism and environmentalism, there is no optimal being (in the world). We're symbiotic assemblages that contain, and are contained in, multitudes.

Morton then repeats these thoughts for another two chapters. Again, the examples he brings up are interesting, but his argument doesn't go anywhere. It ultimately boils down to "Treat the strange stranger with curiosity and respect because you're just as strange. Sit with your discomfort and be open to novelty." There's no depth to Morton's ethics, no exploration of how some strange strangers are more vulnerable than others, how pollution makes the body permeable through violation and violence, how nomadism is forced upon immigrant labourers and refuges. There's similarly no exploration of how local knowledges and practices operate as a refusal to the logic of capitalist hegemony (to engage with social media, to consume your lack away, and to always always talk about the latest entertainment product), nor of rootedness as existing prior to fascism. In other words, there is no systemic or historical analysis despite Morton's systemic rhetoric.

Are we really going to let fascists claim our love of soil? Of the fertile spaces and peoples we engender and grow with? Not all of us can afford a trip to Tibet. I wonder who brings the food to the Tibetan monks? I'll never know because Morton doesn't mention them once.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a person means never being sure that you're one.

Morton is likely too smart by half. (this is also what happens when English professors tangle with science) Here he forges midway between polemic and summons and hopefully crafts a radical dismissal. He doesn’t like the notion of Nature as it denotes something both static and apart: not-us. This is similar to his argument in Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. I appreciate the commitment to consistency, but I think something is lost in the process.

Wilderness areas are the unconscious of modern society, places we can go to keep our dreams undisturbed.

The book is an homage to Darwin and ultimately serving a move towards integrating the strange stranger and affording a more equal consideration to all beings, Morton harbors high hopes and should be commended. He establishes Darwin alongside Freud and Marx but also subversively alongside Dickens: an enfogged reality is gradually realized. The issue is that our sense-making, our obligation to narrative is threatened by these qualifications. There’s some doubt about the efficacy of such imploring.

Let me think and stew.

[Allen O'leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great writing in here, but you do probably need to be a practised humanities reader to get the most out of it.

Central thesis is something like; We need to let go the idea of 'natural' in order to understand our deeply embedded place in the ecological 'mesh'. It's kinda about ooze and animal and hybrid as opposed to national parks and looking after birds.

This is not a book that is like those 'one idea expanded to 200 pages' non-fiction 'ideas' books. Also it is not a straight out philosophy book, there is not the close argument you would expect to find there. As Morton is an English professor he sometimes uses slightly off-beat examples (try English Romantics and Milton) that you wouldn't expect to find in this philosophical territory, but it doesn't unbalance the argument.

This *is* one idea pushed a very long way in an interesting way by a humanities writer who has escaped their discipline. His writing is often more rhetorical than strictly logical, so if you prefer your continental philosophy over your analytical you will like the style.

I find Morton's pushing very provocative, and I am glad he escaped his discipline, and I will read more of him.

[Virga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gera knyga. Ypač jeigu atrodo (kaip man) kad "natūralių produktų", "grįžimo į gamtą", etc. "ekologija" yra kažkas smarkiai ne tas (tai yra tiesiog mados ir verslai). Bet nėra taip lengva išartikuliuoti, kas yra tas eko-interesas ir koks mąstymas jį sukuria. Tai va šitoj knygoj Mortonas puikiai tą padaro. Nulupa po vieną nuo ekologinio mąstymo visus tradicinius ("filosofinius") šablonus, visas komercines dekoracijas, visus rūžavus pažadus, išmeta visokius "žmogaus kaip aukštesnės būties" kliedesius. Kas lieka - saitai ir ryšiai su viskuo, kas realiai, o ne pirsigalvotai, yra aplinkui, viso to neišrūšiuojant pagal vertę.

[Karl Steel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The position of hunting for anthropocentrism is anthropocentrism. To claim that someone's distinction of animals and humans is anthropocentric, because she privileges reason over passion, is to deny reason to nonhumans. We can't in good faith cancel the difference between humans and nonhumans. Nor can we preserve it" (76)

A nonsystematic, brisk, aphoristic "prequel" to Ecology without Nature.

Morton's been adopted by the object-oriented ontologists, for good reason, although it's hard to tell whether his ecological thought allows for the withdrawn "for itself" and the "interplay of real and sensual objects" of Graham Harman. Compare:

"I hold that one billiard ball hides from another no less than the ball-in-itself hides from humans" (188) and "Real objects are incapable of direct contract, and indeed many have no effect on one another at all. Even the law of universal gravitation only applies among a narrow class of physical objects, and even then concerns a limited portion of their reality....objects confront each other only by proxy" ("Vicarious Causation" 200)

to Morton's

"Nothing is complete in itself" (33); "nothing is self-identical" (83); BUT, perhaps more harmonious with Harman, "'interconnection implies separateness and difference. There would be no mesh is there were no strange strangers. The mesh isn't a background against which the strange stranger appears" (47)

I'm delighted to do without "nature" without abandoning materiality or real acting objects (which, per Harman and Latour, may be ideas just as much as they might be so-called realia); and I'm delighted with this book, which, if it weren't so obnoxiously priced, would be a welcome addition to my graduate seminar.

Some favorite bits follow:

"Really thinking the mesh means letting go an idea that it has a center. there is no being in the 'middle'--what would 'middle' mean anyway?" (38)
"A dog might look cute until it bites into a partridge's neck" (38)
excellent readings of Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, where "we witness the Mariner ignoring the ethical entanglement with the other, then restarting it (or letting it restart) from an imaginably nightmarish ground. The disturbing, inert passivity of life forms is the zero level of this encounter" (47)
Morton sets himself against against the "earthbound" Heidegger, whose "environmentalism is a sad, fascist, stunted bonsai version, forced to grow in a tiny iron flowerpot by a cottage in the German Black Forest. We can do better" (27); although he doesn't do without Heidegger altogether, of course: "Heidegger poetically said that you never hear the wind in itself, only the storm whistling in the chimney, the wind in the trees. The same is true of the mesh itself. You never perceive it directly. But you can detect it in the snails, the sea thrift [sic?] and the smell of the garbage can. The mesh is known through the being of the strange stranger" (57)
Morton sets himself against uncritical conceptions of life, "There's something slightly sizeist about viewing life as squishy, palpable substances, as if all life forms shared our kinds of tisue. This prejudice breaks down at high resolutions. Viruses are large crystals. The common cold virus is a short string of code packages as a twenty-sides crystals; it tells DNA to make copies of itself. Is the rhinovirus 'alive'? If you say yes, you ought to consider a computer virus alive. RNA-based beings such as viruses requires hosts in order to replicate [so too, I say, do humans]" (67)
Humans are "fairly uniquely good at throwing and sweating: not much of a portfolio" (71)
Without citing Derrida's discussion, via Benthem, of 'not-being-able,' Morton says something similar: "We could categorize life forms according to weakness and vulnerability, rather than strength and mastery, and thus build platforms for finding solidarity in our shared incompetence" (71)
"Rugged, bleak, masculine Nature defines itself through extreme contrasts. It's outdoorsy, not 'shut in.' It's extraverted, not introverted. It's heterosexual, not homosexual. It's able-bodied--'disability' is nowhere to be seen, and physical 'wholeness' and 'coordination' are valued over the spontaneous body" (81) "Masculine Nature is unrealistic. In the mesh, sexuality is all over the map. Our cells reproduce asexually, like their single-celled ancestors or the blastocyst that attaches to the uterus wall at the beginning of pregnancy. Plants and animals are hermaphrodites before they are bisexual and bisexual before they are heterosexual. Most plants and half of animals are either sequentially or simultaneously hermaphorditic; many live with constant transgrender switching. A statistically significant proportion of white-tailed deer (10 percent plus) are intersex" (84) "The ecological thought is also friendly to disability. There are plentiful maladaptions and functionless phenomena at the organism level" (85)
"We need something like a 'no-self' description of states of mind--'anger has arisen here' says enough of what is meanginful about 'I am angry,' without fixing emotions in the amber of identity" (119) [but] "By not holding an objectlike picture of myself in mind, by being true to my inability to pin myself down, I'm being more honest. The ecological thought includes the subject, as our trip through dark ecology showed. The subject isn't an optional extra. Subjectivity is like a waterbed: push it down in one place, it pops up in another. Thinking that personhood is the enemy of ecology is a big mistake" (120)
Very good when jettisoning the "infinite" (despite invocation of the theist Levinas), where he speaks, for example, of "the shock of very large finitude" (118): thus, it's "harder to imagine four and a half billion years than abstract eternity. It might be harder to imagine evolution than to imagine abstract infinity. It's a little humiliating" (5); however, he still uses the word infinite "the [evolutionary/ecological] mesh consists of infinite connections and infinitesimal differences" (30)

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was inspired to look for Timothy Morton’s books in the library catalogue after reading this interview with him. ‘The Ecological Thought’ is very different to the usual sort of books I read about environmental disaster; much more abstract and philosophical. In it, Morton presents a number of new concepts, including the Mesh (an interconnectedness of all things, essentially), the Strange Stranger (a personification of the Other, I think), and hyperobjects (human creations that will vastly outlive us, like polystyrene and plutonium). His writing style is more conversational and clearer than I expected, given past experience of obscurantist philosopher-theorists (COUGH Žižek COUGH). Nonetheless, he brings in a variety of literary and pop culture references that at times seem to elide rather than elucidating his arguments. The book gave me a lot to think about, though, and there were a number of points I found especially useful. The first was this, on data destroying illusions:

Learning about global warming serves to make us feel something much worse than an existential threat to our lifeworld. It forces us to realise that there never was a lifeworld in the first place, that in a sense ‘lifeworld’ was an optical illusion that depended on our not seeing the extra dimension that NASA, Google Earth, and global warming mapping open up. The more information we acquire in the greedy pursuit of seeing everything, the more our sense of a deep, rich, coherent world will appear unavailable: it will seem to have faded into the past (nostalgia) or to belong only to others (primitivism).

I also appreciated this sensible comment about literature and the environment, which recalled The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable:

Art’s ambiguous, vague qualities will help us think things that remain difficult to put into words. Reading poetry won’t save the planet. Sound science and progressive social policies will do that. But art can allow us to glimpse beings that exist beyond our normal categories.

Morton has a great deal to say about evolution, DNA, and consciousness, which I found interesting albeit not directly relevant to climate change. As a social scientist, I’m accustomed to a very anthropocentric view of environmental problems. It was rather refreshing to come across a new angle, even if I wasn’t always convinced of its helpfulness. At other moments, though, Morton is very on the nose:

There is global warming; there is an ecological emergency; I’m not a nihilist; the big picture view undermines right-wing ideology, which is why the right is so afraid of it. However, the melting world induces panic. This is a problem, philosophically and otherwise. Again, it’s a paradox. While we absolutely have complete responsibility for global warming and must act now to curb emissions, we are also faced with various fantasies about ‘acting now’, many of which are toxic to the kind of job humanists do. There is an ideological injunction to act ‘Now!’ while humanists are tasked with slowing down, using our minds to find out what this all means.

A further highlight Morton’s analysis of the Tragedy of the Commons, a much abused and over-simplified concept. It’s amazing how often the centuries during which the commons were communally managed prior to enclosure are ignored. Like Morton, I find the idea of resources being unmanageable unless individually owned ‘grates on my left ecologist nerves’. At the end, he marshals his ideas neatly into synthesis, producing some especially quotable phrases:

DNA has no flavor. Nor is DNA a ‘blueprint’ as the common prejudice believes - it’s a set of algorithmic instructions, like a recipe book. There is no picture of me in my DNA.

[...]

Society isn’t like a bunch of molecules randomly jostling each other with Brownian motion. As Darwin argued, even butterflies value choice. It’s one of the abiding curiosities of capitalist ideology that it accords a gigantic value to choice in one sense, and none whatsoever in another.

I enjoyed ‘The Ecological Thought’ and will look for more of Morton’s work. He has a unique and appealing angle on the environment, although I’ll reserve judgement on whether its value is greater than as a curiosity.

[Le G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Même si beaucoup d'éléments culturels/ scientifiques, ils sont très mal amenés c'est dommage, y'a aucun fil directeur+ style d'écriture beaucoup trop chiant à lire donc ça fait baisser la note.

[Martin Hare Michno · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are certain concepts by Timothy Morton which I like: the mesh, strange strangers, hyperobjects, and, especially, ecology without Nature. His writing on capitalism and postmodernism is great too. However, if you were to ask me to describe his "ecological thought", I don't think I'd be able to do it. I gathered some ideas here and there, but Morton jumps around a lot in his writing, and at times I didn't really know what he meant.

[ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guía de como salir del ambientalismo, de la ecología profunda, de la crítica a la crítica de capitalismo. Este libro propone un animismo radical. Coexistimos en una malla, un campo monstruoso en que todo está conectado. Lo otro, lo diferente, el animal, son en resumen un extraño forastero, alguien demasiado familiar (pues está en tu genoma) pero extraño a la vez, pues el tiempo con el que transcurre la evolución es inconmensurable. Pensar ecológicamente no es bonito porque derriba una Naturaleza que nunca existió, algo que supuestamente sucedía paralelamente a la cultura, o que la cultura en un juego de causa consecuencia destruye la Naturaleza. Frente a esto hay varios desenlaces ideológicos pero quizás uno común es la impotencia. Somos concientes cada vez más y con más detalle de la predominancia de ciertas existencias...el plutonio seguirá aquí, y funciona a otra escala temporal fuera de lo que hemos evolucionado los organismos. La cosmopolitica tendrá que hacerse cargo de estos hiperobjetos, como los llama Timothy Morton. Deberá también hacerse responsable de la conectividad con los extraños forasteros. No hay excepcionalismo humano en torno a la conciencia o la mente, y cada vez más la inteligencia artificial está queriendo poner en tela de juicio lo humano de la máquina. La propuesta aquí es dejar de atribuirle tanto requisito al ser, al existir, al pensar. El que esté libre de SIM que lance la primera piedra...todos somos organismos prosteticos, y nuestros cuerpos hablan gracias a protesis anteriores del caldo de genes del que provenimos.
Haré alguna otra reseña de este texto que veo bien necesaria para teorías posthumanas...quizás antes de ser posthumanas hay que aprender a ser humana, coexistir.

[Swarm Feral · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn good and succinct. It troubles nature moralism, nature-human split, regressive green thought, humanisms, and the like while still damning the existent order. Really also good at troubling overly posi affect theory which I always need cause that’s maybe my lane lol

I will trouble this by saying in an attempt to not come off as regressive it elides native ontologies and epistemologies and ethics, to its own detriment imo

[Eric Casteleijn · Rating 1 out of 5]

By no means, ever, buy this book. I think the ideas in it are important, and had I been able to finish reading it, I would on the whole probably have agreed with most if not all of them, but the writing is so exceedingly poor that it makes me want to punch the author in the face. Metaphorically, of course, because I am not a violent man. Metaphorically, and repeatedly.

Never mind that Wall-E and Blade Runner seem to be the author's central sources of inspiration, never mind that pretty much half the words in the book are in quotation marks. The actual writing is so bad, that I'm inclined to look into the possibility of having the author's license to use the English language revoked. To exemplify, I fear I have no option but to leave you with a quotation for which I apologize in advance.

"This ghostly Nature inhibited the growth of the ecological thought. Only now, when contemporary capitalism and consumerism cover the entire Earth and reach deeply into its life forms, is it possible, ironically and at last, to let go of this nonexistent ghost. Exorcise [fucking SIC] is good for you, and human beings are past the point at which Nature is a help."

That was on page 5. I believe I made it to 11.

Now, again: The fact that we consider ourselves and our culture and the mess we've created and continue to create to be separate from nature, and ourselves somehow post-evolutionary (a laughable idea: it is like considering ourselves no longer bound by the laws of gravity because we invented planes,) is dangerous, and scary. However, with the likes of Mr. Morton for our champions, perhaps it is for the best that humanity now cede the stage to the cockroaches or the rats.

[Adhoc · Rating 3 out of 5]

very deep. but he quotes almost all white men. and it's telling that he rejects holism right when some historically oppressed groups are trying to come to terms with their own social identities in the face of persistent diminishment. i wish he could've had more to say about the meaning of social identity construction in ecological thought without offhand dismissing it. but i liked a lot of his theoretical moves.

[Bernardo Ochoa]

You know that idea that you had when you were a kid about spiderwebs, or anthills, or beaver dams? That one where you paused and thought, "If spiders build spiderwebs, and we build houses, aren't houses a part of nature too?" and then after you thought that the line between Nature and non-nature got all blurry? This book is about that concept.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part I felt very much on the same page with Timothy Morton. The thoughts and opinions that shaped in my mind whilst doing my BSc was pretty much a part of the mesh. I did however get lost at parts, and I will probably have to think more about what was said for me to get a thorough understanding (especially towards the end). It might be a bit frustrating to read the same idea over again in different ways, but it also helped with the flow and with clarifying what it all means. A bit between stars, but due to the kinship I felt to the author, I rounded it up to 4.

[Adrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morton´s image of the mesh as a material that connects us all is a very interesting one. Many texts which speak about ecology will quickly point out that we are all, both human and nonhuman beings, interconnected. While this statement is true and interesting it does not always take us deeper. With the image of the mesh, Morton does precisely that. He explores how the mesh decreases the distance between all beings, flattens all hierarchies and furthermore highlights how our diverse world, made up of so many parts actually comes together in a united whole to shape the cloth of creation.

[Milo Galiano · Rating 3 out of 5]

No está mal, pero no me gusta cómo escribe este señor. Sus tesis son interesantes, pero es un libro de no-ficción, más que un ensayo filosófico. Igual, me han gustado las lecturas sobre las potencias intermodales del pensamiento ecológico, una imagen del pensamiento otra, en este todo tecnológico dogmático. Es poca cosa, esperaba más después de verme varias entrevistas y leer artículos más «serios».

[Steven]

I have thoughts about this book that probably aren't suited to a goodreads review. So I'll just be productive and note that Ursula Heise reviewed a different Morton book, but it might as well apply to this one.

[Asher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprising ideas in here. Like watching Derrida and Darwin think through climate change.

[Eliza Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t stop thinking the Ecological Thought. That’s really good though, right?

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could say this was engaging, but clarity isn't something that's sought here. It's like watching words pile up around a central question until it becomes almost impossible to see through them. And yet, and yet, he's on to something, namely, the heartbreak of living in a time of extinction.
He reminds me of Marshall Mcluhan, who wrote hard-to-read books about the media, designed not to espouse some personal topography , but more to open our eyes to the truth. Break it to us gently, perhaps. Morton is adored by a lot of artists, and there's something in his writing that lends itself to a certain brainy contemplation.
The star rating here is pointless. Its one star and five stars and everything in between.

[Tim Mcleod · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll have to disagree with the 'lucid' assessment of the page review. There are some excellent ideas scattered throughout the essays, yet I found the text to be a little too incoherent to absorb. It reads like a brilliant lecture drunkenly delivered late at night by your favorite professor.
So, if you are into that, go for it. I only wish a skilled editor could get her hands on this and cut out the boozy quips.

[Ronan Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morton melts your brain. This is probably the best introduction to the endless tap he's been putting out lately: dark ecology; hyperobjects; the strange stranger, the gang's all here. Just slow down on the pop culture references and don't bring out a book on Annihilation until after September 4th and we're good.

[Gerald Prokop · Rating 5 out of 5]

maybe the most important book I've read.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me reread it. Detached everything.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is Timothy Morton at his most hopeful and accessible. A good book to start with if you haven’t read him. He’s almost charming.

Morton likes to know everything and know it from every possible angle. A great thing for a philosopher to be. At worst it comes across as name dropping. At best it helps find a breakthrough way of thinking about environmentalism.

If you’re not on his team the humor can come across as arrogant, especially the more political he gets. One minute he makes a great point about how everything gets bifurcated into laissez-faire or conversely some kind of authoritarianism, discussing the instability of capitalism. Next second, he’s like… and those damn republicans and their dang darn it denialism!…but I digress…

I get that he wants all angles understood but if we’re critiquing capitalism, dualism, and inclusiveness (as the “strange stranger”) then why continue to sling mud at the political ghost appendage of the science deniers and the media apparatus. Maybe this was simply a lingering symptom at the end of the housing bubble. A spell we all were under. It’s time to let this kind of thing go. Even the decadence of democratic idealism has become a media narrative today. Never something to get distracted by without acknowledging its environmental aesthetic.

Morton takes ethics over aesthetics, but I wish he would dig rather into the overlap there. How aesthetics is actually where ethics emerges from. He has enough background in Heidegger, Deleuze, Sartre, Kant and plenty of other philosophers to go there. But instead his critique of fascism is peripheral and mud slinging at best. Unfortunately it may be hard to do both. To be accessible, relating through focus to the common reader and at the same time take on these more difficult all encompassing political aesthetics.

If you’re going to write in a relatable hopeful tone then how am I to believe the anti-hope against nihilism point? A brilliant point, albeit made abstractly. I found myself reluctant to consume each different morsel of information (like this one), without some kind of ethical environmental space to breathe. Ethics in theory is one thing.

I think he realizes today that embodying ethics is another. His latest biographical book is better, in that it did just that. It introduced the reader to his mental environment. It was uncomfortable but also influential on an emotional level. At least more than this writing was for me. Morton is passionate about what he does but also lives out his environmentalism. He’s one of those emotional leaders we need right about now.

[Milan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm currently reading Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics and hoped it would be clearer. It isn't. Which is a shame, because I really sympathize with what Morton's trying to do here, which is not easy to capture, but could be described as an attempt to dispossess people (nature writers, ecocritics, you, me) of their primitivist, retrograde Romantic ideas about what (our relationship to) Nature is or should be, and to replace, or complement them with an equally Romantic stance which embraces artificiality, mediacy, irony, etc. pp., because, ironically, they're ultimately better for those things, or beings, the term nature comprises than reverence and feigned naïveté. Nature, with a big N, sets up a 'beyond' into which all things supposedly natural are crammed, either to be gaped at or forgotten altogether. In any case, the existence of this term precludes the realization that there really is no hard line to be drawn, for better or worse; that 'everything is interconnected': the ecological thought.

This just sounds great, doesn't it, and I'm glad that I sort of got this far after what are now about 300 pgs of Morton, because they do not make it easy for their reader. As many a review will tell you on here: the writing's difficult. It's not even that Morton is overly opaque or dense; rather, they jump around too much, and, infuriatingly, always bolt before having really covered the ground from which they're ever eager to leave again. Morton's range is impressive, but the associative style really makes it difficult to follow at times. (In a recent blog post, Morton says that in the writing of their books, "allowing your unconscious mind a wide berth is the whole deal", which is actually very apt: you feel that there is a connection, but it's always subterranean and takes a good deal of work to excavate. Yes, this rings true: the books are laborious to read.) Even so, Morton has something to say, and the reward feels worth it when the communication has been successful, which it thankfully often enough is. And anyhow, I'm only getting into this field; so I will certainly return.

[Rú · Rating 1 out of 5]

Me vais a perdonar por no hacer una reseña verdaderamente crítica, porque habría muchas cosas que podría decir y analizar de este libro (porque escribimos una reseña de él unas compañeras y yo). Simplemente diré que no me gustó y que, mientras que es un libro valioso para que los teóricos ecologistas lo critiquen, no me pareció (desde mi punto de vista bastante ignorante) que aportase gran cosa, y menos algo nuevo. No es un libro para introducirse en la teoría ecologista, ni para aprender de ecología ni de ecologismo, por si alguien estuviera valorando leerlo para eso.

Está dividido en una introducción y tres capítulos:

El primer capítulo rastrea y traza conexiones entre elementos de la cultura popular (de El paraíso perdido de Milton a canciones de The Cure) que, según Morton, expresan el pensamiento ecológico. Es mayormente una retahíla de los aspectos de las obras de la cultura popular que recogen este pensamiento, pero también presenta y explica dos conceptos valiosos: el concepto de malla (mesh) y el de extraño forastero (strange stranger). El segundo capítulo... fue demasiado oscuro para mí como para resumir de lo que va. Me parecieron bastantes ideas sueltas y sin un hilo conductor claro. En el tercer capítulo plantea una crítica a lo que él denomina "ambientalismo", que se distancia del mundo y es una forma de laissez faire, una ideología incapaz de hacer frente al capitalismo. El tercer capítulo es una crítica al ambientalismo, al capitalismo, al concepto de "Naturaleza" y a otras tantas cosas; y es, en mi opinión, el capítulo más valioso del libro, junto con la introducción.

[Håvard Bamle · Rating 3 out of 5]

First chapter was pretty inaccessible but it introduced some concepts with a lot of potential.
The mesh is well enough explained, but I couldn't quite grasp the strange stranger..

Second chapter was polemical and at times provocatively poorly argued. But the foundation in the writings of Darwin (and Richard Dawkins) were eye-opening in discrediting a teleological view of evolution. Not a main argument in itself of the book, but an important supporting argument.
My main take-away from this chapter is that GOD I HATE ENDNOTES! Who likes end notes?? You're just hiding bad theoretical foundations, leaving your own ideological premises undisclosed.
I suppose the main takeway from reading my notes on this chapter is that we need to rethink what we count as natural, because Nature (capital 'N') does not belong in the ecological thought.

Third chapter was really great. The argument finally came into its own and tied everything together nicely. The main point here, I suppose, is that capitalism is the main perpetrator of global climate catastrophe, and that the ecological thought is a way to see beyond capitalism. To paraphrase the book: "the end of history" is really only the beginning of history.

[Italo Aleixo De Faria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Se quisermos salvar o planeta precisamos não apenas de ações concretas, mas também mudar o nosso modo de pensar. Por isso a filosofia é uma ferramenta tão importante, pois é através dela que o conhecimento humano é analisado e novas narrativas são criadas no processo. Em O Pensamento Ecológico, o filosofo Timothy Morton apresenta sua proposta de uma nova narrativa que vai de encontro com a noção atual de ecologia e propõe, entre outras coisas, a rejeição da natureza como tal!


Para Morton o grande problema está na maneira como reificamos a natureza, ou seja, como transformamos ela numa entidade à parte dentro da realidade e nos submetemos à busca de algo inalcançável. Ao colocarmos a natureza num pedestal, nós automaticamente nos apartamos dela e passamos a perseguir um estado idealizado — que na realidade está sempre em transformação. É com isso em mente, que o filósofo propõe sua ontologia, onde a natureza não existe como um objeto distinto, mas como parte do todo.


Morton ancora a construção de sua narrativa erigindo certos conceitos, sendo o mais fundamental deles o da malha, onde TODAS as coisas do universo estão conectadas e mantêm inter-relações. Nenhuma entidade no universo atua isoladamente, nem mesmo uma mera partícula, tudo interfere em tudo, a malha descentraliza o que existe e coloca todas as coisas em perspectiva: a árvore da vida deixa de ser uma árvore — como menciona Rodrigo Petronio no posfácio da edição brasileira — e se iguala à todo o resto. Dessa forma tiramos a natureza idealizada do pedestal e nos inserimos diretamente como parte dela. Sem centro, também não existem bordas externas, a malha não tem início ou fim, dessa forma não só as espécies não podem ser diferenciadas umas das outras, mas os próprios seres vivos não se diferenciam entre dentro e fora — essas já são discussões bem antigas da biologia. A vida e a não vida passam a ser a mesma estrutura.


Dentro dessa malha são inseridos outros conceitos, também interessantes, como o estranho estrangeiro, a noção de que nunca poderemos acessar a completa realidade de um objeto, mesmo que seja ele comum ao nosso cotidiano; os hiperobjetos, que transcendem a nossa experiência de tal forma, que não podem ser situados numa localidade ou mesmo tempo específicos (como a radiação, o aquecimento global, o microplástico, etc.); e outros conceitos estéticos e morais como, empatia, egoísmo e altruísmo.


Mesmo soando interessante, essa ecologia profunda proposta por Timothy Morton não é totalmente inovadora, muitos desses conceitos já são conhecidos da ecologia tradicional, ela simplesmente varre para baixo do tapete os problemas que a ecologia tem enquanto ciência, como a incapacidade de fazer predições a partir de dados empíricos — uma vez que a correlação entre os elementos do sistema de fato são imprevisíveis — propondo essa "nova maneira de pensar". É aí que o livro de Morton se torna confuso.


Em momento algum fica muito clara qual é a proposta do autor de fato, como dito, os conceitos propostos em sua ontologia não são realmente inovadores, mas sim analisados por uma óptica filosófica diferente. O fato é que, O Pensamento Ecológico é, antes da proposta de uma nova ontologia propriamente dita ou da introdução aos seus conceitos — como promete —, uma espécie de brainstorm, com ideias soltas, citações literárias, referências musicais, críticas artísticas e religiosas, que se misturam sem nenhuma organização de fato. Fazendo jus a sua ideia de malha, é provável que a compreensão de sua obra se dê apenas após a leitura de livros que sequer foram lançados. De fato, a bibliografia do autor é vasta, então talvez esse livro não seja uma introdução adequada mas sim uma pequena peça de um sistema que é preciso ser acompanhado como um todo.


Propondo uma visão contrária à da epistemologia clássica, o pensamento de Timothy Morton é uma vertente da filosofia especulativa. Enquanto a primeira pensa na realidade sempre mediada pela experiência, essa última tenta abarcar a existência dos objetos independente de sua interação com a percepção. Essa sempre foi uma linha divisória que todo pensador sonha em conquistar. A epistemologia clássica aceita sua existência considerando tudo para além dela como metafísico — e consequentemente impossível de ser estudado — enquanto a filosofia especulativa volta a pensar no que existe para além dela, como fizeram muitas vezes outros filósofos no passado. A questão é como fazer isso sem recorrer à religião e mitologias?


Eu só me pergunto é como isso funciona na prática. O Pensamento Ecológico soa mais como um delírio abstrato de inúmeras citações artísticas do que como algo concreto, não é atoa que o autor se defenda a todo momento de soar niilista. O livro é confuso, o problema está mais na construção do pensamento do que com o pensamento de fato. Eu gosto das reflexões que Morton traz à tona, acho que elas são essenciais para o pensamento humano, assim como gosto da maneira que Nieztsche descontrói de maneira similar o conhecimento humano, mas nessa empreitada de propor uma nova ontologia para a emergência ambiental que estamos enfrentando, tudo soa muito abstrato.


Morton ataca pontos claros: a mentalidade do capitalismo que consegue se reinventar se apropriando de qualquer problema; os direitos dos outros seres vivos, num sistema onde ninguém é mais importante que ninguém; as implicações estéticas na impossibilidade da existência de uma natureza idealizada; a nossa relação com os hiperobjetos que devem perdurar por milênios; etc. Mas não o faz de forma clara e em meio as transgressões literárias do autor, é realmente difícil saber do que ele está falando.


Nós de fato estamos inseridos dentro de uma grande malha, mas como explicar a necessidade de proteger o meio ambiente se nós somos o meio ambiente!? Como funcionaria na prática tal tipo de narrativa. As reflexões são válidas mas a proposta é muito inconstante e quebradiça. Talvez o pensamento do autor ganhe corpo melhor com a leitura de suas outras obras, porque é difícil ver O Pensamento Ecológico como a porta de entrada para um novo tipo de ecologia de fato!

[Ainara Onzain Sarrias]

Ties ajjajaaj què he fet què puta deskisiada quan m'emociono per alguna cosa soc perillosa.........
Llegint la intro q ens va donar el profe de comparada em vaig emocionar perquè, tota iluminada, vaig veure una CLARA connexió entre el que diu aquest senyor i "El naixement de la tragèdia" del nostre gran amic. BUENO BUENO BUENO. total que el raul em diu que sí i jo que vaig a la biblio a buscar el llibre.............. i ara me l'he llegit tot, no he entès la meitat (és molt fàcil de llegir pro parla de coses MOLT VARIADES, x exemple el faking ADN, tema q vaig suspendre a 4t de la ESO), i ara hauré de fer un treball sobre això xq no em dona temps de fer una altra cosa. Emocionar-se és perillós.
En fi, tampoc està malament, simplement va d'aquí allà, fa brometes, i té una proposta. No es pot dir que l'hagi gaudit.
Ara.... la introducció... BONÍSSIMA jajaajajaj
En fi, que pensament ecològic vol dir menys greenwashing i més meditar i reflexionar el món sense por a l'abisme (que és el que és el desastre ecològic) i més antikapitalisme des de l'amor.
un petó estimades