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The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
Human beings have a lot of difficult work to do if we’re to learn to recognize the inherent worth of all vibrant matter.
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
Bennett uses the phrase “thing power” to capture the lively and active qualities of objects
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
“I was struck by what Stephen Jay Gould called the ‘excruciating complexity and intractability’ of nonhuman bodies,” Bennett writes. “But, in being struck, I realized that the capacity of these bodies was not restricted to a passive ‘intractability’ but also included the ability to make things happen, to produce effects.” Bennett likes to reference... See more
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
If you encounter somebody that is different from you, maybe, if you’re good at lingering for a moment or two in wonder at that person, you can postpone the moment of fear or rejection,” she told me. The subtitle to “Vibrant Matter”—“a political ecology of things”—hints at an interpersonal politics: in her view, politics should always include a sens
... See moreMorgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
In 1917, the sociologist Max Weber argued that “the fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.” Ever since, we’ve tended to think of ourselves as living in a disenchanted world, from which all magic has been stripped. Bennett asks us to entertain the possibility ... See more
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
When we claim that there is, on one side, a natural world and, on the other, a human world, we are simply proposing to say, after the fact, that an arbitrary portion of the actors will be stripped of all action and that another portion, equally arbitrary, will be endowed with souls
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
Perhaps the New Age crystal enthusiast and the experimental scientist have something in common.
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
take perspectives that seem implausible and find the good intuitions embodied in them, and then go with it
Morgan Meis • The Philosopher Who Believes in Living Things
Bennett describes herself as something of a minimalist—but her minimalism is driven by a sense of the agency of things. “I don’t want to have such a clamor around,” she told me.