Abstract for 23rd Gathering in Biosemiotics: "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis"

I have submitted the abstract below to the organizers of the 23rd gathering in Biosemiotics, which is to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, July 31st - August 4th. 

***

A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis   

Morten Tønnessen

Professor of philosophy, University of Stavanger, Norway   

ABSTRACT 

In this presentation I will present the book chapter “A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis” (Tønnessen, forthcoming). The chapter presents a biosemiotic perspective on the basic situation for human beings and that of other organisms, with an emphasis on the subjective experience of sentient animals, and the sign use of all lifeforms. The human condition is portrayed as traditionally conceived, and then revisited in the new context of the current environmental crisis. In recent decades, the expression ‘The Human Condition’ has been strongly associated with the political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). In her book with the same name (Arendt 1958), she stresses that “[t]he earth is the very quintessence of the human condition”, and yet argues that “the “human artifice of the world separates human existence from all mere animal environment”. In this sense, in her view, human reality is distinguished from the reality of any other living being on Earth, despite our shared ecological circumstances. A cornerstone of the chapter is an analysis of the materiality of the environmental crisis, and how the massive changes humans have caused in the physical environment can be understood in light of the semiotic agency of humans and other living beings. Experiential aspects of the environmental crisis are highlighted. The aim of the chapter is to improve our understanding of our species´ place in the natural world, our historical role in causing a global crisis for life, and how we can move forward towards a more sustainable future. As Masatake Shinohara (2020) has proposed, “what conditions human beings in the most fundamental sense includes not only the world of the human artifact but also the world of earthly things”, and in light of this, “the consideration of the human condition should be fundamentally reformulated” by making the human world “open to the earthly things that vastly expand outside of the human artifice”.

REFERENCES 

Arendt, Hannah (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

Shinohara, Masatake (2020). “Rethinking the Human Condition in the Ecological Collapse”. The New Centennial Review 20(2): 177–203. 

Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis. In Lenart Škof, Sashinungla, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (eds.), Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures). Springer.