Brian Treanor

See the external link on this entry for a "widget" supplied by Bloomsbury, which will give you access to the first chapter. Today, we find ourselves surrounded by numerous reasons to despair, from loneliness, suffering and death at an individual level to societal alienation, oppression, sectarian conflict and war. No honest assessment of life can take place without facing up to these facts and it is not surprising that more and more people are beginning to suspect that the human story will end in tragedy. However, this focus on despair does not paint a complete and accurate picture of reality, which is also inflected with beauty and goodness. Working with examples from poetry and literature, including Virginia Woolf and Jack Gilbert and the films of Terrence Malick, Melancholic Joy offers an honest assessment of the human condition. It unflinchingly acknowledges the everyday frustrations and extraordinary horrors that generate despair and argues that the appropriate response is to take up joy again, not in an attempt to ignore or dismiss evil, but rather as part of a “melancholic joy” that accepts the mystery of a world both beautiful and brutal.

Continental philosophy has long been concerned with the question of transcendence, a fact attributable in part to the historical significance of phenomenology and the legacy of debates surrounding transcendental idealism, the epoche, the status of the world and of other people, and, at least for some philosophers, the question of God. The question takes different forms in Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas, Derrida, Marion, and others working in this tradition, but it remains an abiding concern for each of them. Over time the persistence of this issue has formed a body of work that constitutes a kind of center of gravity—one among several—that characterizes continental thinking. Keywords: Immanence, transcendence, wilderness, abstraction, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Bugbee, Annie Dillard.

Philosophy, by and large, tends to dwell on what might be called the woeful nature of reality—finitude, suffering, loss, death, and the like. While these topics are no doubt worthy of philosophical concern, undue focus on them tends to obscure other facets of our experience and of reality, giving philosophy a temperament that could justifiably be called melancholic. Without besmirching the value of such inquiry, this paper suggests that philosophers have largely ignored the experience of joy and, consequently, missed its distinctive contributions to our understanding of the meaningfulness of life and the goodness of being. Traditional accounts of the problem of evil are rooted in what John D. Caputo calls “strong theology,” which tends to construe evil as a problem to which God should supply the answer or solution. However, if we call into question traditional accounts of omnipotence, evil ceases to be a problem, and we become free to engage it as part of what Gabriel Marcel calls “the mystery of being.” Thus liberated, we are free to assess more clearly phenomena missed by melancholic accounts of being, among them the experience of joy, attested to in diverse forms of philosophy, literature, memoir, and elsewhere.

A rich hermeneutic account of the way virtue is understood and developed. Despite its ancient roots, virtue ethics has only recently been fully appreciated as a resource for environmental philosophy. Other approaches dominated by utilitarian and duty-based appeals for sacrifice and restraint have had little success in changing behavior, even to the extent that ecological concerns have been embraced. Our actions often do not align with our beliefs. Fundamental to virtue ethics is an acknowledgment that neither good ethical rules nor good intentions are effective absent the character required to bring them to fulfillment. Brian Treanor builds on recent work on virtue ethics in environmental philosophy, finding an important grounding in the narrative theory of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney. Character and ethical formation, Treanor argues, are intimately tied to our relationship with the narratives through which we view the human place in the natural world. By reframing environmental questions in terms of individual, social, and environmental narratives about flourishing, Emplotting Virtue offers a powerful vision of how we might remake our character so as to live more happily, more sustainably, and more virtuously in a diverse, beautiful, wondrous, and fragile world.

"Every other is truly other, but no other is wholly other." This is the claim that Aspects of Alterity defends. Taking up the question of otherness that so fascinates contemporary continental philosophy, this book asks what it means for something or someone to be other than the self. Levinas and those influenced by him point out that the philosophical tradition of the West has generally favored the self at the expense of the other. Such a self-centered perspective never encounters the other qua other, however. In response, postmodern thought insists on the absolute otherness of the other, epitomized by the deconstructive claim "every other is wholly other." But absolute otherness generates problems and aporias of its own. This has led some thinkers to reevaluate the notion of relative otherness in light of the postmodern critique, arguing for a chiastic account that does justice to both the alterity and the similitude of the other. These latter two positions--absolute otherness and a rehabilitated account of relative otherness--are the main contenders in the contemporary debate.The philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel provide the point of embarkation for coming to understand the two positions on this question. Levinas and Marcel were contemporaries whose philosophies exhibit remarkably similar concern for the other but nevertheless remain fundamentally incompatible. Thus, these two thinkers provide a striking illustration of both the proximity of and the unbridgeable gap between two accounts of otherness.Aspects of Alterity delves into this debate, first in order understand the issues at stake in these two positions and second to determine which description better accounts for the experience of encountering the other.After a thorough assessment and critique of otherness in Levinas's and Marcel's work, including a discussion of the relationship of ethical alterity to theological assumptions, Aspects of Alterity traces the transmission and development of these two conceptions of otherness. Levinas's version of otherness can be seen in the work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo, while Marcel's understanding of otherness influences the work of Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney.Ultimately, Aspects of Alterity makes a case for a hermeneutic account of otherness. Otherness itself is not absolute, but is a chiasm of alterity and similitude. Properly articulated, such an account is capable of addressing the legitimate ethical and epistemological concerns that lead thinkers to construe otherness in absolute terms, but without the "absolute aporias" that accompany such a characterization.

This paper examines the postmodern question of the otherness of the other from the perspective of Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy. Postmodernity—typified by philosophical movements like deconstruction—has framed the question of otherness in all-or-nothing terms; either the other is absolutely, wholly other or the other is not other at all. On the deconstructive account, the latter position amounts to a kind of “violence” against the other. Marcel’s philosophy offers an alternative to this all-or-nothing model of otherness. His thought can satisfy the fundamental (and legitimate) ethical and philosophical concerns of postmodern thinkers without resorting to the paroxysmal hyperbole that characterizes philosophies of absolute otherness. Moreover, Marcel’s critique of the “spirit of abstraction” offers a unique perspective on what might motivate such paroxysmal hyperbole.

Insufficiently radical environmentalism is inadequate to the problems that confront us; but overly radical environmentalism risks alienating people with whom, in a democracy, we must find common cause. Building on Paul Ricoeur’s work, which shows how group identity is constituted by the tension between ideology and utopia, this essay asks just how radical effective environmentalism should be. Two “case studies” of environmental agenda—that of Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, and that of David Brower—serve to frame the important issues of cooperation and confrontation. The essay concludes that environmentalism must lead with its utopian aspirations rather than its willingness to compromise.

One of the central points of Derrida’sArchive Fever is that the nature of the “archive” affects not only what is archived, but also how we relate to and access it. The archive also conditions the process of archiving itself and, indeed, the very nature of what is archivable. Derrida's comments, however, were made in 1995, when the full extent of the Internet boom was only beginning to become evident. The intervening years have reshaped the archive in ways that Derrida could scarcely have foreseen in 1995. Although many of the changes bear out his fundamental theses, the power that the Internet has come to exert over public and private discourse demands that we re-examine the archive in order to begin to assess what these changes portend

Much of the literature addressing environmental virtue tends to focus on what might be called “personal virtue”—individual actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the individual actor. There has, in contrast, been relatively little interest in either “virtue politics”—collective actions, characteristics, or dispositions—or in what might be called “public virtues,” actions, characteristics, or dispositions that benefit the community rather than the individual. This focus, however, is problematic, especially in a society that valorizes individuality. This paper examines public virtue and its role in environmental virtue ethics. First, I outline different types of virtue in order to frame the discussion of public virtues and, in particular, a subclass of virtues I will refer to as political virtue. Second, I focus on practical problems and address the inadequacy of personal virtue for effecting social change and, therefore, for addressing most environmental crises. Finally, I argue that public and political virtues are necessary, if under emphasized, conditions for the flourishing of the individual, and that they are important complements to more traditional environmental virtues

The twentieth century saw the rise of hermeneutics, the philosophical interpretation of texts, and eventually the application of its insights to metaphorical “texts” such as individual and group identities. It also saw the rise of modern environmentalism, which evolved through various stages in which it came to realize that many of its key concerns—“wilderness” and “nature” among them—are contested territory that are viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology to be sure, but it also requires a sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task. Interpreting Nature brings together leading voices at the intersection of these two increasingly important philosophical discussions: philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. The resulting field, environmental hermeneutics, provides the center of gravity for a collection of essays that grapple with one of the most compelling issues of our time: how do humans relate to nature? Adopting a broad and inclusive view of “the environment, Interpreting Nature takes up restoration and preservation, natural and built environments, the social construction of nature and nature as it imposes itself beyond our categories, and much more. The rich diversity of contributions illustrates the remarkable fecundity of hermeneutic resources applied to environmental issues. Taken together, the various contributions to this collection mark the arrival of environmental hermeneutics as a distinct field of study.

This paper takes up Richard Kearney's work The God Who May Be, specifically in the context of postmodern debates concerning epistemological claims regarding the other. Kearney's hermeneutics of religion attempts to forge a middle path between ontotheological philosophies of religion and various quasi-religious manifestations of postmodernism; however, my main concern is to address certain points of disagreement between Kearney and proponents of a deconstructive "religion without religion" principally Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo. The main issue at stake is just how other God is, which is itself a specific case of a broader question concerning otherness per se. Caputo et al. claim that religious assertions about God are fundamentally undecidable, which means that they are "infinitely translatable" and "substitutable," that we can never tell what is a translation of what, but the ultimate point is that it "does not matter" The undecidable nature of religious claims includes the very claim that religion is a discourse about God, which is why deconstructive religion without religion is a messianic hope for "the impossible" devoid of any content. Kearney objects that such radical undecidability leaves us lost in the desert ofkhora with no way to distinguish, even imperfectly and provisionally, between God and Satan, good and evil, the widow and the terrorist. In this paper I claim that Kearney succeeds in finding this via tertia between the Scylla of dogmatism and the Charybdis of complete indeterminacy by thinking God in two important ways: as persona-prosopon (which avoids confusing God with khora or monstrosity) and as posse (which keeps us from dogmatism). /// O presente artigo toma em particular consideração a obra de Richard Kearney The God Who May Be, especificamente no contexto dos debates pós-modernos acerca do estatuto epistemológico da alteridade. A abordagem hermeneutica que Kearney faz da religião procura estabelecer um caminho médio entre as filosofias ontoteológicas da religião e várias manifestações quase-religiosas do pós-modernismo. O autor do artigo, contudo, pretende estabelecer alguns pontos de desacordo entre Kearney e os defensores da "religião sem religião" típica do movimento da desconstrução, tendo em vista, sobretudo, as aportações de Jacques Derrida e de John D. Caputo. Em questão está especificamente a alteridade de Deus, ou seja, um caso específico da questão mais alargada acerca da alteridade em si mesma. Caputo, por exemplo, defende que as asserções religiosas sobre Deus são fundamentalmente indecidíveis, o que significa que elas são "infinitamente traduzíveis "e "substituíveis ", enfim, que nós nunca sabemos o que pwpriamente é tradução de quê, sendo que, no fundo, a questão em si mesma "não importa". O carácter indecidível das propostas religiosas inclui a ideia de que a religião constitui um discurso sobre Deus, razão pela qual a desconstrutora "religião sem religião "constitui uma esperança messiânica pelo "impossível" desprovida de qualquer conteúdo. Kearney objecta que uma tal indecidibilidade radical nos deixa perdidos no meio do deserto da Chora sem capacidade de distinguir, ainda que imperfeita e provisoriamente, entre Deus e Satanás, entre o bem e o mal, entre a viúva e o terrorista. Assim, o autor do artigo defende que Richard Kearney é bem sucedido em sua busca de uma via tertia entre a Cila do dogmatismo e a Caríbdis da completa indeterminação graças ao seu modo de pensar Deus por dois caminhos distintos: como pessoa-prosopon (o que impede confundir Deus com Chora ou monstruosidade) e como posse (o que nos resguarda do dogmantismo).

One of the most astonishing aspects of Levinas’s philosophy is the assertion that other persons are absolutely other than the self. The difficulties attending a relationship with absolute otherness are ancient, and immediately invoke Meno’s Paradox. How can we encounter that which is not already within us? The traditional reply to Meno (anamnesis) reduces other persons to the role of midwife and thereby, says Levinas, mitigates their alterity. Although Descartes seems to provide a rejoinder to anamnesis in theThird Meditation, this response alone is not adequate for Levinas’s purpose. St. Augustine, in De Magistro, describes a form of “recollection” that accounts for infinity while still reducing the human interlocutor to the role of midwife, thus reasserting a marginal role for the other. Levinas needs additional help to overcome the specter of anamnesis, which he finds in Kierkegaard’s relationship of the individual to “the god” in the Philosophical Fragments.

It is increasingly clear that virtue ethics has an important role to play in environmental ethics. However, virtue ethics—which has always been characterized by a degree of ambiguity—is faced with substantial challenges in the contemporary “postmodern” cultural milieu. Among these challenges is the lure of relativism. Most virtue ethics depend upon some view of the good life; however, today there is no unambiguous, easily agreed-upon account of the good life. Rather, we are presented with a bewildering variety of conflicting accounts of the good life. Narrative—in particular Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity—has much to contribute to virtue ethics, including resources that can help us respond to the chal­lenges presented by the postmodern context. Narrative constitutes an “ethical laboratory” by providing us with an “as if” experience through which we can try out various ethical alternatives. Two sorts of environmental narratives, working in concert, further help to limit relativist objections: (1) narratives of environmental survival (which identify dispositions, such as simplicity, necessary for our long-term survival) and (2) narratives of environmental flourishing (which make a virtue of necessity by pointing out those dispositions necessary for our survival often contribute to our flourishing beyond mere survival).