How Can Nature Come Apart from Itself? Self-Consciousness and Metabolic Rift
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Mathew Abbott in
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Abstract
This paper philosophically elaborates Michael Tomasello’s developmental psychology to clarify the implicit content of the eco-Marxist concept of metabolic rift. It reconstructs Marx on metabolism and human dependency on nature, bringing out that while all living beings labour because all must act to mediate their dependency on nature, the labour of self-conscious animals has a distinctively social character. This can explain the sense in which human beings are autonomous from nature: not because we enjoy any kind of independence from it but because we can criticise and transform the ways in which we mediate our dependency on it. By grasping that link between autonomy and responsibility, we can show why rift is a metabolic pathology to which only self-conscious animals are vulnerable, and what it would mean to overcome it.
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How Can Nature Come Apart from Itself? Self-Consciousness and Metabolic Rift
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Mathew Abbott in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This paper philosophically elaborates Michael Tomasello’s developmental psychology to clarify the implicit content of the eco-Marxist concept of metabolic rift. It reconstructs Marx on metabolism and human dependency on nature, bringing out that while all living beings labour because all must act to mediate their dependency on nature, the labour of self-conscious animals has a distinctively social character. This can explain the sense in which human beings are autonomous from nature: not because we enjoy any kind of independence from it but because we can criticise and transform the ways in which we mediate our dependency on it. By grasping that link between autonomy and responsibility, we can show why rift is a metabolic pathology to which only self-conscious animals are vulnerable, and what it would mean to overcome it.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 804 | 804 | 125 |
| Full Text Views | 46 | 46 | 11 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 133 | 133 | 30 |
