Ecology and Existence: Bringing Sartre to the Water's Edge

562 Pages·2017·2.628 MB·English

by  Matthew C. Ally

Ecology and Existence

Ecology and Existence
Bringing Sartre to the Water’s Edge
Matthew C. Ally
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Excerpts from Search for a Method by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Hazel E. Barnes, translation
copyright © 1963 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Used by
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, an
division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. Notebooks for an ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1992. Used with permission of Chicago University Press.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. Colonialism and neocolonialism. London: Routledge, 2006. Used
with permission of Routledge.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Imaginary. Translated by Jonathan Webber. New York:
Routledge, 2004. Used with permission of Routledge.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. Critique of Dialectical Reason: Volume One, Theory of Practical
Ensembles. Translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith. London: Verso Books, 1991a. Used with
permission of Verso Books UK.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. Critique of Dialectical Reason: Volume Two (unfinished), The
Intelligibility of History. Translated by Quintin Hoare. London: Verso Books, 1991b. Used
with permission of Verso Books UK.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology.
Translated by Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Used with permission
of Philosophical Library.
Excerpts from Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821–1857. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981. Used with permission of Chicago University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ally, Matthew C., 1965– author.
Title: Ecology and existence : bringing Sartre to the water’s edge / Matthew C. Ally.
Description: Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016627 (print) | LCCN 2017017973 (ebook) | ISBN 9780739182895
(electronic) | ISBN 9780739182888 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Existentialism. | Ontology. | Human ecology. | Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905–1980.
Classification: LCC B819 .A65 2017 (ebook) | LCC B819 .A65 2017 (print) | NLM B819 .A65
2017 | DDC 142/.78—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016627
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For Biljana,
and for our daughters, Ana and Eva,
and for their generation,
and the seventh generation,
and the seven-hundredth generation,
and for all the other-and-more-than-human beings of Earth,
without whom,
naught.
on·to·lo·gy n. The study of being or existence.
(From Greek, on-, ont-, present participle of eninai–“to be, to exist”)
e·co·lo·gy n. The study of relationships between organisms and their environments.
(From Greek, oikos–“house, home, habitation, dwelling place”)
lim·no·lo·gy n. The study of ponds, lakes, and other bodies of fresh water.
(From Greek, limne–“standing water, tidal pool, marsh, lake, pond”)
It is for the ocean that the tempest is made.
Ponds, when they are stirred up, give off only unhealthy odors.
I must love you to tell you these things.
Forget me.
—Gustave Flaubert
The great difficulty of limnology is that
many quite disparate things
must be done at once.
—G. Evelyn Hutchinson

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Prelude: Many Ways to Wonder xvii
confessions of a lifelong pond watcher
Part I: ENVIrONMENtaLISM aND HUMaNISM 1
ships passing in the light
1 Toward an Existential Ecology 3
water, water, everywhere
2 Bringing Sartre to the Biosphere 21
the truth of a pond
Part II: NatUrE aND CULtUrE 49
what can we know about a pond?
First Interval
On Method and Substance 51
phenomenology
3 A Phenomenological Exploration 65
to the pond itself
Second Interval
On Method and Substance 95
dialectics
4 A Dialectical Investigation 105
everything is in this pond
ix