Abstract: "Animal agency in politics and eco-existentialism"

Today I have composed the abstract rendered below, for the 2nd research seminar of the Norwegian-Estonian research project "Animals in changing environments: Cultural mediation and semiotic analysis", which will take place at University of Stavanger Friday October 24th.

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Animal agency in politics and eco-existentialism 

Morten Tønnessen 

Associate professor in philosophy at Department of social studies & Department of health studies, University of Stavanger, Norway  

What is animal agency? And how are various notions of animal agency explicitly or implicitly presented in different kinds of texts? 

In this presentation I will start out by summarizing a survey conducted in the biosemiotic community on the notions of ‘agent’ and ‘agency’ (Tønnessen, forthcoming), with regard to animal agency. I will also briefly outline the semiotics of animal representations as a field of study (Tønnessen and Tüür 2014). 

Next I will share observations made in my analysis of mentions of animals in Norwegian political party programs for the parliamentary period 2013–2017 (Tønnessen 2013). One of the findings is that animals are in these documents predominantly described in terms of economic resources, not as sentient beings endowed with subjective experience. Even though animal welfare is now addressed by several (particularly small) parties, even most of the parties that are the most positive to improving animal welfare speak of animals in very anthropocentric, reductionistic manners whenever animal welfare is not the topic. 

I will furthermore analyse the essay “The Last Messiah” (1993 [1933]), written by the Norwegian eco-existentialist and mountaineer Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990), with the notion of animal and animal agency in mind. For Zapffe, human compassion with suffering animals is central. But unlike in the case of human beings, he claims, the suffering of animals is limited to their own, more or less immediate, suffering. Likewise animals too feel anxiety, but only human beings can “fear life itself”, or fear their own being. Even though human beings are unique in some respects, including when it comes to relating to death, I will argue that many animals too are in some situations aware that they are mortals. 

Acknowledgement 

This work has been carried out thanks to the support of the research project Animals in Changing Environments: Cultural Mediation and Semiotic Analysis (EEA Norway Grants/Norway Financial Mechanism 2009-2014 under project contract no. EMP151).  

References 

Tønnessen, Morten 2013. Analyse av partiprogrammer for 2013–2017 – utført for Dyreetikkonferansen 2013 [Analysis of political party programs for 2013–2017 – conducted for the Norwegian Animal Ethics Conference 2013]. Oslo 2013: Dyreetikkonferansen. Available online via Dyreetikkonferansen.no, ResearchGate (DOI: 10.13140/2.1.3693.1203), Academia.edu, Scribd. 21 pp. 

Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. The biosemiotic glossary project: Agent, agency. Forthcoming in Biosemiotics 8(1) (April 2014). 

Tønnessen, Morten and Kadri Tüür 2014. The semiotics of animal representations: Introduction. In Kadri Tüür and Morten Tønnessen (eds), The Semiotics of Animal Representations (Nature, Culture and Literature 10), Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, p. 7–30.  

Zappfe, Peter Wessel 1993 [1933]. The last Messiah [Den sidste Messias, 1933]. Translated by Sigmund Kvaløy and Peter Reed. In Peter Reed and David Rothenberg (eds): Wisdom in the Open Air: The Nor­wegian Roots of Deep Ecology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p. 40–52.

"Semiotics of being and Uexküllian phenomenology" to be published in Analecta Husserliana

My article "Semiotics of being and Uexküllian phenomenology" is about to be published as a chapter in the forthcoming volume 110 of Analecta Husserliana. I only got to see an email about its proof-reading this afternoon (I had not received any notice about the acceptance of my text for publication). The book is scheduled for publication already in August.

At 14 pages, my text summarizes my notions of 'semiotics of being' and 'Uexküllian phenomenology' and relates them among other things to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's 'phenomenology of life', Peter-Wessel Zapffe's 'biosophy', the eco-phenomenologies of David Abram and Ted Toadvine and the 'Phaneroscopy' of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Two key quotes:

"If we believe that eco-phenomenology, or environmental philosophy in general, is all about human perceptions, we commit a categorical mistake, and miss out on the heart of the matter."

"There can thus be no sharp distinction between philosophy and the life sciences, but rather a gradual transition from the more-or-less philosophical/generic to the more-or-less scientific/specific."

The title of Analecta Husserliana vol. 110 (CX) is Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-Cosmic Horizons of Antiquity, and it is as always edited by A.-T. Tymieniecka. My contribution has been placed as chapter 27, in section VI, "Nature, World, Continuity", along with chapters by Francesco Totaro, Sibel Oktar and Catia Giaconi.

NATURE AND ARTIFICE IN MANIFESTING/PRODUCING THE BEING
Francesco Totaro

SEMIOTICS OF BEING AND UEXKULLIAN PHENOMENOLOGY
Morten Tonnessen

THE PLACE: WHERE WE SEE THE WORLD AS A LIMITED WHOLE
Sibel Oktar

LINES FOR CONTEMPORARY CONSTRUCTIVISM TO REVISIT AND REINTEGRATE THE ANCIENT SENSE OF CONTINUITY BETWEEN MEN AND NATURE
Catia Giaconi

We the living - abstract to G10

I have just submitted my abstract to the Tenth annual gathering in biosemiotics.

We the living: The reception of Uexküll in Norwegian ecophilosophy

By Morten Tönnessen

Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu

Submission to the Tenth Annual International Gathering in Biosemiotics,

to be held on June 22–7, 2010

at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP)

in Braga, Portugal

Arne Naess (1913-2009) and Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) are two out of three classics within Norwegian ecophilosophy, which has been acclaimed for its influence on 'radical environmentalism' internationally (cf. Peter Reed & David Rothenborg (eds.), Wisdom In The Open Air: The Norwegian Roots of Deep Ecology, University Of Minnesota Press 1992). Both Naess and Zapffe introduced fundamental disciplinary concepts (e.g. 'biosophy' by Zapffe, 'ecosophy' and the distinction between the deep and the shallow ecological movement (thus 'deep ecology') by Naess). And they both based part of their philosophies on Uexküll's work – though Uexküll was admittedly much more central to Zapffe than he was to Naess, for whom Uexküll mattered first of all in the development of his early (pre-environmentalist) philosophy. For a start, we can say that while Naess in the main neglected the experiential and interpretative aspects of Umwelt theory, Zapffe added pessimism to the mixture.

Uexküll plays a significant foundational role in Naess' published dissertation Erkenntnis und Wissenschaftliches Verhalten (Jacob Dybwad, Oslo 1936) as well as in Zapffe's colossal main work (and doctoral dissertation) Om det tragiske [On the tragic] (1941). Interestingly (and fittingly), the Journal of philosophy characterized Naess' 1936 work as "a valuable contribution to a naturalistic, behavioristic description of [...] cognitive ’content,’ and the procedure of science". In Zapffe's work, Uexküll plays the role as the biologist, depicting the worlds of the living and not least the radical difference between the living and the non-living. By using Uexküll's Umwelt theory as a stepping stone, the existentialist philosopher Zapffe makes two basic points:

1) that there is a "brotherhood of suffering" ranging "from the amobea to the dictator", and

2) that humans are unique in having several additional "interest fronts"; not only biological interests but further social, autotelic, and metaphysical interests.

Despite the fact that Uexküll was first of all, in the context of Naess' work, influential at an early stage (and was read by Naess in a slightly simplistic manner), we see here how Zapffe's reading of Uexküll is informing also when we are considering the thoughts Naess was later to develop on the topic of self-development through identification with others. In Zapffe's case, Uexküll's Umwelt theory constitutes a central ingredient in his lifework as such. In order to understand the paradoxical tension between the sympathy/identification with animals on one hand and the explicit anthropocentrism in Zapffe's ethics (where the human experience of wilderness ranks higher than anything else) on the other, we have to start by understanding the biological outlook on which he build his existentialist ecophilosophy.

Conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, 2010

I have submitted the following...

Contribution to the 8th annual conference of
THE NORDIC SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY
(Nordisk Selskab for Fænomenologi)

under the general theme

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NEW ORIENTATIONS: IN PHENOMENOLOGY
to be arranged at Södertörn University College
in Stockholm, April 22-24, 2010

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Individual presentation
by Morten Tønnessen

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Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu
Vindmøllegangen 1, 4631 Kristiansand, NORWAY
Kuu 39-64, 50 104 Tartu, ESTONIA
Academic homepage: http://utopianrealism.blogspot.com/

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Suggested title:
Semiotics of Being and Uexküllian Phenomenology
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German-Baltic biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) did not regard himself as a phenomenologist. Neither did he conceive of himself as a semiotician. Nevertheless, his Umwelt terminology has of late been utilized and further developed within the framework of semiotics and various other disciplines - and, as I will argue, essential points in his work can fruitfully be taken to represent a distinctive Uexküllian phenomenology, characterized not least by an assumption of the (in the realm of life) universal existence of a genuine first person perspective, i.e., of experienced worlds.

In the course of the presentation, I will briefly relate Uexküllian phenomenology to
a) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804),
b) the eco-existentialism of Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990)
c) eco-phenomenology (including David Abram and Ted Toadvine),
d) and semiotics of nature (biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, zoosemiotics)