Bence Marosan - Collective Embodied History of Human and Non-Human Living Beings. An Eco-phenomenological and Eco-ethical Stance

Season 9 continues with a recording from our 2024 annual conference, Embodiment and History. This episode features a presentation from Bence Marosan Abstract: We, humans, are living in a world, shared with non-human beings. Throughout our entire history, we, humans, prevailingly lived according to an anthropocentric paradigm, and we related to non-humans essentially as potential resources, obstacles, or even threats. In other words, humans instinctively, or sometimes on a reflectively elaborated ideological basis, treated non-humans in objectified or instrumentalized terms. During Modernity, due to rapidly developing technologies, this anthropological stance even had increasingly catastrophic consequences, that became apparent in the 1960s, thanks to the increasing global ecological crisis, which now has features that appear to threaten even the mere physical existence and survival of the human race. In my presentation, I would like to have a closer look at this ecological crisis from the viewpoint of Husserlian phenomenology, and I will look for possible ways of solution, again, from a Husserlian perspective. Not only from a biological viewpoint, but also for a phenomenological approach, humanity appears as a subsystem of the Earth as a global ecosystem, entwined with other ecological subsystems, and partly interdependent from them. As many authors and interpreters made it clear (e.g. Erazim Kohák, Annabelle Dufourcq, Ullrich Melle), in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl – especially in his late period, in the 1930s – we can find many ecologically relevant topics. In this regard, I would like to highlight especially his conceptions concerning life and the inherent value of life in his ethical lectures (as could be read in Husserliana Volumes 28, 37, and 42). In my presentation, I aim to show how a Husserlian notion of the inherent value of life would lead to an inescapable ethical imperative to respect life in every form and try to harmonize our relationship with the other, non-human parts of the Earthly ecosystem, with which we are essentially entwined. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2024, co-organised with University of the West of England. The conference was held in Bristol on the theme of 'Embodiment and History'. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/