Jamie Graham— Abram Quote: How Philosophy Estranges Us From the Earth

 “A long line of philosophers, stretching from Friedrich Nietzsche down to the present, have attempted to demonstrate that Plato’s philosophical derogation of the sensible and changing forms of the world…contributed profoundly to civilization’s distrust of bodily and sensorial experience, and to our consequent estrangement from the earthly world around us.” (Abram, p. 94)

    This quote by David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous powerfully summarizes a long standing critique: that the philosophical tradition stemming from Plato is fundamentally responsible for civilization’s deep estrangement from the earth and sensuous experience. Plato’s core philosophical project involved the primacy of the eternal, unchanging forms (the perfect concepts residing outside of our sensory world) over the sensible and constantly changing formats of material reality (the world we perceive with our bodies). This created an intellectual devaluation of the body and sensory experience. The physical world, being just an imperfect copy of the true forms, was deemed unreliable and untrustworthy.

    This philosophical divide had lasting consequences, creating a separation of mind from body, reason from sensation, and ultimately, human culture from the natural world. By teaching us to value the abstract, the permanent, and the conceptual above the immediate, the sensual, and the colonial, Western thought created a civilization that inherently distrusts the body’s knowledge and the earth’s reality. Technology, language, and logic became the tools to transcend and control the changing material world, rather than instruments for deepening our participation in it. The result is a cultural estrangement where the environment is seen as an object rather than a living partner in our existence.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kip Redick Introduction

  You be able to write your blog by clicking “new post” in the appropriate class.   Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry. Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The stu...
Read more

symbols, culture death, bones

 I find it ironic that skulls, at least in our culture, represent death when in most cultures, death seems to be accepted as something that's not final, in a sense. While it does seem to marry well with the concept of erasure, the erasure that death speaks to seems--to me, at least--to be that of a previous state of being, or a former self. This view of death is usually explored as a type of cleansing and a way to (for lack of more abstract terms) wash away the old to uncover the new or the reformed; a necessary destruction for the purpose of rebirth.  Skulls, however, are a phenomenon, usually reserved for the representation of decay and rot, which is why I find the conflict between this symbolism and this particular view of death so interesting. Out of all symbols that we use to represent death in our culture, why is the skull so prevalent? What makes it so representative of the American worldview that we landed on it as our, for the most part, definitive symbol of mortality...
Read more

Isabella Mann: Cabeza De Vaca

 In the 1991 film, Cabeza de Vaca, the protagonist's transformation from ship wreak survivor to healer and spiritual figure underscores the profound relationship between human survival and the natural world. Stripped of his colonial power and status, he learned to depend on the land not only for sustenance but also for its meaning. The sacredness of place and ecology becomes central to his journey, as the environment itself serves as a teacher, teaching him resilience, humility, and interconnectedness. His journey through surviving and helping various tribes allowed him to fully experience the true meaning of life. His survival is not only achieved through domination but through listening, observing, and adapting to the rhythms of nature and the different spiritual practices around him. 
Read more