Abstract: My paper will address the problem of thinking 'nature' in relation to Foucaultメs notion of historical ontology. According to this line of critique, regulative ideals of 'nature' are shaped by political processes embedded in different systems of knowledge, modulated by the historical conditions in which these concepts are located. Foucault is historicizing ontology in hope of exposing arbitrariness in our ways of thinking and thus opening grounds of critique. It follows that conflicting views about the relations between humans and the natural world are historical artefacts that express limited truths, relative to the cultures and the times that produce them. No universal or global perspective on nature can be established, except by violence. Against this style of critique stand environmentalists struggling to develop intercultural perspectives to eliminate environmental destruction. My argument will be that Foucaultian-style critique relativizes alternative world-views. A Foucaultian approach takes the critique of alternative world-views to a point at which no other relation to our own past or to other cultures is possible, except for the one that we already have: namely, a stance of critical superiority, affirmed by our (Western) appreciation of the relativity of all understandings. I will argue that different possibilities emerge if we adopt a relational ontology which enables us to avoid a homogenizing historical account of human possibilities.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-03-29
Language: en
Type: article
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