{"id":10784,"date":"2020-06-04T22:31:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T03:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10784"},"modified":"2021-06-14T07:17:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T12:17:22","slug":"eco-ethico-aesthetics-and-george-floyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/06\/04\/eco-ethico-aesthetics-and-george-floyd\/","title":{"rendered":"Eco-ethico-aesthetics and George Floyd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I explain in Shadowing the Anthropocene<\/a><\/em>, process-relational philosophy in a Peircian-Whiteheadian vein takes aesthetics<\/a> to be first, ethics to be second, and logic (which, in our time, we need to think of also as eco-logic) to be third. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a temporal sequence, but a logical one: aesthetics is found in the response to the firstness<\/a> of things, their immediate, uninterpreted presence to us; ethics — in the response to a concrete, empirically encountered other; and logic — in the response to the patterns those encounters and appearances take. Each of them is a “normative science<\/a>,” a way of cultivating one’s character in the world, so each takes repetition, and the difference found between repetitions, as its way of being, of becoming, and of inhabiting the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

On the firstness or primacy of aesthetics, this perspective is in agreement with the object-oriented<\/a> forms of speculative ontology. On the others it is not, because the latter lack Peirce’s insight into triadism, or what we might call the ontological three-dimensionality of the world. To explain that again: for anything to be a world, there must be the firsts (things in their purely qualitative “isness”) and the seconds (actual causal encounters between things) and the thirds (meanings, representations, interpretations). Take away any one of those, or even de-emphasize any one of them (as so many metaphysical systems do), and you lose something crucial in your understanding of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logic, and thus also eco-logic, is built from ethical interactions and aesthetic encounters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do we respond to images of the killing of an unarmed black man by police in a distant city in our own country? Most immediately, I respond with revulsion, with horror, and upon realizing what this is and what it means (its thirdness), with shame. Shame to live in a country that cannot contain its racism. The thirdnesses being generated in my incapacity to do anything about it cry out for some form of secondness, some responsive action: so I speak, I write, I share, I respond to a call (to join a protest, to express a need for change). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remain alert to reports that come in, in all their (alternatingly) exhilarating and deeply disheartening confusion. Aesthetics is here in everything; ethics is here in everything; logic is here in everything. The desire to unleash the beauty of the world, to right the wrongs of the world, to reset the conditions that shape the world — all of these begin from the sensibility by which we receive <\/em>the world as it comes to us. That sensibility does not need training, but for those (so many of us) in whom it has been deconditioned, it needs releasing, reopening, reorienting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every day, and every moment, brings the world to us just as that one did. Every moment calls upon us to orient ourselves in our response to it. But some moments<\/a> call for wider and more encompassing<\/a> arcs of reorientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one such moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

(Among the places I go to in order to stay informed about daily developments in U.S. politics is historian Heather Cox Richardson’s wonderful, and extremely well researched, Letters from an American<\/a> blog. Here’s yesterday’s post<\/a>.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I explain in Shadowing the Anthropocene, process-relational philosophy in a Peircian-Whiteheadian vein takes aesthetics to be first, ethics to be second, and logic (which, in our time, we need to think of also as eco-logic) to be third. This is not a temporal sequence, but a logical one: aesthetics is found in the response […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[690660,4422],"tags":[628452,16876,520620,628451,4420,468,628453,628449,628439,23316,628456,628457,628454,455162,628458,628459,423],"class_list":["post-10784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural_politics","category-process-relational-thought","tag-a-n-whitehead","tag-aesthetics","tag-c-s-peirce","tag-eco-ethico-aesthetics","tag-ecology","tag-ethics","tag-firstness","tag-george-floyd","tag-george-floyd-protests","tag-logic","tag-object-oriented-ontology","tag-revolutionary-moments","tag-secondness","tag-shadowing-the-anthropocene","tag-systemic-racism","tag-u-s-cultural-politics","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2NW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9856,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/09\/shadowing-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":10784,"position":0},"title":"Shadowing the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times arrived in the mail today. It's published by punctum books, an open-access academic and para-academic publisher I've found to be a real delight to work with. Eileen Joy deserves a medal for her leadership of punctum, and\u00a0Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei's cover and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2018\/10\/180502shadowingtheanthropocene-cover-front-draft-647x1024-174x275.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10173,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/06\/22\/mcmindfulness\/","url_meta":{"origin":10784,"position":1},"title":"(Mc)Mindfulness?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 22, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A Guardian article making the rounds on social media argues that the mindfulness movement has become \"the new capitalist spirituality\" -- \"magical thinking on steroids,\" which instead of overturning the \"neoliberal order,\" now \"only serves to reinforce its destructive logic.\" This \"McMindfulness,\" as Ronald Purser calls it, has been \"stripped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6778,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/07\/01\/preparing-my-peirce-centennial-proposal\/","url_meta":{"origin":10784,"position":2},"title":"Preparing my Peirce Centennial proposal","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It will be quite an event for Peirce scholars. My proposed paper will be on applications of Peirce to film theory, and in particular the two neo- (quasi-?) Peircian approaches that I present in Ecologies of the Moving Image. The first of these builds on Sean Cubitt's three-part typology of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4325,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/30\/what-a-bodymind-can-do-part-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":10784,"position":3},"title":"What a bodymind can do – Part 3","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the concluding part of a three-part article. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here. They should be read in the sequence in which they were published. \u00a0 The True, the Good, and the Beautiful All of this can be related to the triad of the True,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/05\/trinity.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1221,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/03\/26\/aesthetics-peirce-in-the-santa-monica-mountains\/","url_meta":{"origin":10784,"position":4},"title":"aesthetics & Peirce in the Santa Monica Mountains","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I like to follow extended think-fests (such as conferences) with brief flights away from cerebrality, at least for a couple of days where possible. So following the SCMS, I visited the Santa Monica Mountains, which included a hike up La Jolla Canyon and Mugu Peak at the northern end of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"santa-monica-mountains-m.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/03\/santa-monica-mountains-m.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9848,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/13\/shadowing-the-anthropocene-a-readers-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":10784,"position":5},"title":"Shadowing the Anthropocene: a reader’s guide","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the \"reader's guide\" I promised for Shadowing the Anthropocene. It begins with a quick summary of the book's main contribution -- a kind of \"master key\" to what it tries to do. It then lays out a set of paths one can take through the book, which would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Image result for klee angelus novus","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.fineartamerica.com\/images\/artworkimages\/mediumlarge\/1\/1-angelus-novus-paul-klee.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10784"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10794,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions\/10794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}