Poetics of the Earth: Natural History and Human History

227 Pages·2019·9.059 MB·English

by  Augustin Berque

Poetics of the Earth
Poetics of the Earth is a work of environmental philosophy, based on
a synthesis of eastern and western thought on natural and human history.
It draws on recent biological research to show how the processes of evolu-
tion and history both function according to the same principles.
Augustin Berque rejects the separation of nature and culture which he
believes lies at the root of the environmental crisis. This book proposes
a three stage process of “re-worlding” (moving away from the individual-
ized self to become a part of the common world), “re-concretizing” (under-
standing the meaning and historical development of words and things) and
“re-engaging” (reconsidering the relationship between history and subjectiv-
ity at every level of being) in order to bring western thought on nature and
culture into sustainable harmony and alignment.
Thisbookwillbeofgreat interesttostudentsand scholars ofenvironmen-
talstudies,environmentalphilosophy,Asianstudiesandthenaturalsciences.
Augustin Berque has recently retired as Director of Studies in Environ-
mental Philosophy and Geography at the École des hautes études en sci-
ences sociales, Paris, France. He was the recipient of the 2018 International
Cosmos Prize.
Translator Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon is Professor of Humanities at
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. She studied at the Sorbonne
(Licence d’Anglais, DES d’Anglais), France, and the University of California
at San Diego, California (PhD in comparative literature), USA. Her publica-
tions include articles on the novel as well as translations of six philosophical
books and numerous articles.
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Poetics of the Earth
Natural History and Human History
Augustin Berque
Poetics of the Earth
Natural History and Human History
Augustin Berque
Translated by Anne-Marie
Feenberg-Dibon
FirstpublishedinEnglish2019
byRoutledge
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©2019AugustinBerque
TranslatedbyAnne-MarieFeenberg-Dibon
TherightofAugustinBerquetobeidentifiedasauthorofthiswork
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theCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
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OriginallypublishedinFranceas:
PoétiquedelaTerre.Histoirenaturelleethistoirehumaine,essai
demésologiebyAugustinBerque
©EditionsBelin/Humensis,2014
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor
registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationand
explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Berque,Augustin.
Title:Poeticsoftheearth:naturalhistoryandhumanhistory/
AugustinBerque;translatedbyAnne-MarieFeenberg-Dibon.
Othertitles:PoâetiquedelaTerre.English
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2019.|
Series:Routledgeexplorationsinenvironmentalstudies|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2018056690(print)|LCCN2019003870(ebook)|
ISBN9780429259388(eBook)|ISBN9780367200534(hbk)|
ISBN9780429259388(ebk)
Subjects:LCSH:Philosophyofnature.|Natureandcivilization.
Classification:LCCBD581(ebook)|LCCBD581.B437132019
(print)|DDC113–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2018056690
ISBN:978-0-367-20053-4(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-429-25938-8(ebk)
TypesetinGoudy
bySwales&Willis,Exeter,Devon,UK
Contents
Notice vii
Preface:re-naturalizingculture,re-culturatingnaturethroughhistory viii
PARTI
Re-worlding 1
1 Thepoem’sreversal 3
2 Destiniesofthesubject 13
3 Destiniesoftheobjects 41
4 Acosmia,orcosmicity? 48
PARTII
Re-concretizing 65
5 Humanmediance 67
6 Growingtogether 95
7 Includingthemiddle 113
PARTIII
Re-engaging 141
8 Naturemakessensefornature…andbeyond 143
9 Thecontingencyoflifeitself 168
vi Contents
10 History,evolution,trajection 181
Conclusion:Earth,tobesure,isthenamewegiveit,but
Earthistheonethatassertsus 200
Index 202
Notice
1 In this book, people’s names follow the normal East Asian order: the
last name precedes the first name. For example: Mao Zedong, not
Zedong Mao; Kurosawa Akira, and not Akira Kurosawa: etc.
2 Transcriptions are in the pinyin system for Chinese; for example: Mao
Zedong, not Mao Tsetoung, or Mao Tsetung. For Japanese, the Hep-
burn system is used, where the consonants are more or less pronounced
as in English and the vowels more or less as in Italian.
3 Unless otherwise specified, the translations are those of the author.
Preface
Re-naturalizing culture, re-culturating nature
through history
“Re-naturalizing culture, re-culturating nature”: this Marxian inspired
phrase is derived from one of the themes in the 1844 Manuscripts, “Natur-
alisierung des Menschen, Humanisierung der Natur” (naturalization of the
human, humanization of nature). I have used it before at the beginning of
another book;1 it obviously haunts me. That book, intended to develop
the principles of a mesology, started with the idea that the relation of
human societies to the terrestrial expanse originates and functions in ways
which the classic dichotomy between the subjective and the objective
cannot grasp. This dichotomy which we call dualism is the origin of the
couple of modern conceptual oppositions “nature versus culture”, and
the resulting separation between the social sciences and the natural sci-
ences. On the contrary, mesology aims at understanding what in
a concrete milieu unites in a single reality that which dualism separates
into two poles.
I suppose that this is somehow the sense which the expression “re-
naturalizing culture, re-culturating nature” sought to convey. I cannot be
sure because the expression is not mine, nor was I there when it was used
for the first time; moreover there are no accounts of the discussion in
which it was used. That took place in the family home in Saint-Julien, in
the Born county of Les Landes, probably during the 1965 summer vac-
ation. I was not there because I was doing my military service in Baden-
Baden, in Baden-Württemberg. As he sometimes did during the vacation,
my father, Jacques Berque (1910–1995), had assembled a few friends from
the region (or friends from far away passing through), for discussions of an
elevated intellectual order in a relaxed and amicable summer setting. That
time Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), who often came on his way to or from
Navarrenx, was there as well as Roland Barthes (1915–1980). There were
a few others, but my sisters do not remember their names nor the theme
of the encounter, since their role was limited to cooking for and serving
these gentlemen. However in later conversations with my father I inferred
that the theme of the day included the phrase “re-naturalizing culture, re-
culturating nature”. He uses it also in one of his books The Second Orient
(1969), but without any reference to the meeting in Saint-Julien, as well as
Preface ix
in his Mémoires des deux rives (1989) which includes the following passage,
unfortunately not dated (p. 178):
“Re-naturalizing culture, re-culturating nature”: I soon shared this
phrase with the black militants of the school for revolutionary execu-
tives in Wenneba in Ghana, who endorsed it by acclamation. While it
is impossible or almost impossible to translate it without some para-
phrase, it nevertheless expressed Marx’s still romantic inspiration: “Re-
naturalizing culture, re-culturating nature”. Revitalized by the sap of
the African forest, the expression was romantic indeed and even
naively so, as it assumed that technology not only consisted in
machines but also in patience and ambitions.
Both the geography and experience of the Japanese milieu, with its orienta-
tion towards phenomenology and even more to mesology, led me to use
the same phrase a generation later. I adopted the term mesology to trans-
late what the philosopher Watsuji Tetsurô (1889–1960) called fûdogaku or
fûdoron in his work Fûdo, published in 1935. First encountered in 1969,
this book became seminal for me, and I ended up translating it into
French.2 I explained my reasons in Écoumène and will therefore not men-
tion them here. However I must correct an error I made for more than
a quarter-century that concerns the origin of the term mesology. For a long
time I attributed the invention of the term to Louis-Adolphe Bertillon
(1821–1883) who gave it a certain luster, as evidenced in the first edition
(1866–1876) of Pierre Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle,
where I discovered it. I had not yet read in Études d’histoire et de philosophie
des sciences concernant les vivants et la vie (1968) by Georges Canguilhem
(1904–1995) the following passage (pp. 71–72):
In Système de Politique positive (1851) Comte names two doctors he calls
his disciples, Segond and Robin. They are the two founders of the Bio-
logical Society. … The founders of the Society were inspired by positiv-
ism. On June 7, 1848 Robin read a memo On the direction proposed in
a meeting of the founding members of the Biological Society to explain the
title they chose. Robin presented the Comtean classification of the sci-
ences, and outlined the tasks of biology in the spirit of Comte’s work,
the most important one being the study of milieux, for which Robin
even invented the term mesology.
SoletusgiveCharlesRobin(1821–1885)hisdueinthehistoryofscience.He
remains better known for having written a dictionary of medicine with Émile
Littré which became the standard text after 1873, and for opposing the elec-
tion of Darwin to the Académie des Sciences in 1872 in the name of positiv-
ism. He claimed: “Darwinism is fiction, a poetic accumulation of unverifiable
probabilities and seductive explanations without demonstration.”3 Mesology