Kenosis, Nature, and Anthropocentrism: A Response to Fulvi

ABSTRACT

In this paper I address the issues raised by Daniele Fulvi, by focusing on the alleged anthropocentrism of my approach to kenotic thought. I defend ontological anthropocentrism (as opposed to ethical anthropocentrism), arguing that a qualified ontological anthropocentrism is not only inevitable, but also more appropriate in order to think of nature in the context of kenotic thought. Subsequently, I address the question of the relation between kenosis and truth, and the issue of how kenotic thought could, and should, relate to nature. I conclude by arguing that only by conceiving truth as mediated is it possible to develop a kenotic approach to nature that has the potential to contribute fruitfully to environmental ethics.

KEYWORDS:

• Kenosis
• nature
• anthropocentrism
• Bubbio

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to my PhD student Sarah Bacaller, who provided helpful comments, for her amicable assistance by joining in the editing process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Fulvi is paraphrasing from Bubbio (2018, 195).

2 “Thus, before Newton, there indeed were planets and their interactions, which, of course, were exactly what they were without the intervention of any conceptual scheme. However, to claim … that the laws were true even before they were discovered means either making a meaningless assertion, or … making the interactions between planets depend on conceptual schemes” (Ferraris 2020a, 74).

3 This aspect of my approach has been recently remarked by Harmon (2016).

4 Pace Madigan (2017), the “option for the Idealist idiom” is not an arbitrary and possibly idiosyncratic choice “for conveying the same content expressed in common sense realism”; it is the attempt to rigorously think of the possibility of a disposition towards reality (which I call kenotic) which strives to get beyond “self-preoccupation and inveterate narcissism.” The resulting conception of sacrifice is not “lite” or “soft,” or more palatable for contemporary tastes: quite the opposite – in the sense that kenotic sacrifice represents a difficult, even dramatic, option, which challenges the most inveterate philosophical standpoints and the constraints of human nature.

5 Regardless of whether this is actually the case or Vattimo is projecting, at least partially, into Gadamer his own philosophical project, he would certainly agree with Bernstein’s (1983, 150) claim that “If we take Gadamer seriously and press his own claims, they lead us beyond philosophical hermeneutics” – in the direction of hermeneutic ontology.

6 Here I refer to my argument according to which our gaze is always already part of reality, and reality is such because it always already includes our gaze. See Bubbio (2017, 65).

7 This concern is particularly relevant in terms of my interpretation of Hegel. See the discussion of my work by Deranty (2019) and Houlgate (2019). Deranty objects that my emphasis on the realm of reason runs the risk of undervaluing, or even ignoring, nature; whereas Houlgate is concerned that the distinction between the realm of reason/normativity and the realm of nature overlooks nature as being made necessary by the Idea in its independence. In both cases, my account might appear monistic at the epistemological level and dualistic at the ontological level. I responded to these concerns in Bubbio (2019).

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Paolo Diego Bubbio

Paolo Diego Bubbio is Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Turin (Italy). He previously was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University (Australia). His research focuses in particular on the relation of post-Kantian philosophy, and especially Hegel, to the later movements of European philosophy. His books include Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition: Perspectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Recognition (SUNY Press 2014), God and the Self in Hegel: Beyond Subjectivism (SUNY Press 2017) and Intellectual Sacrifice and Other Mimetic Paradoxes (Michigan State University Press 2018).