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Being in Flux
A Post-Anthropocentric Ontology of the Self
Rein Raud
polity
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Copyright © Rein Raud 2021
The right of Rein Raud to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4950-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4951-1 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Raud, Rein, author.
Title: Being in flux : a post-anthropocentric ontology of the self / Rein Raud.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A cutting-edge contribution to the philosophical debate about how to conceptualize reality”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021000209 (print) | LCCN 2021000210 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509549504 | ISBN 9781509549511 (pb) | ISBN 9781509549528 (epub) | ISBN 9781509549740 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Ontology. | Self (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC BD331 .R26 2021 (print) | LCC BD331 (ebook) | DDC 111--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000209
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000210
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book started out as a few explanatory sentences at the beginning of an article, as it seemed necessary for me to clarify my ontological views. Sentences developed into paragraphs, then into passages and chapters. This is the result: the article remains to be written.
My sincere thanks go to Michael Krämer, Vanina Leschziner, Graham Parkes, Chiara Robbiano and Fernando Vidal, who read and commented on previous versions of the book or sections of it – the argument has benefited so much from your input! A deep bow is also due to the anonymous reviewer of the book for Polity, who found only praise for it, despite acknowledging that they disagree with me on all philosophical counts – I am very glad to know that such breadth of mind is still to be found in this world.
I am also truly grateful to John Thompson for hosting me as a visiting scholar in Cambridge in the spring of 2019, as quite a few among the central ideas of the book came to maturation during that period, and to everyone at Polity for their usual excellence and dedication in helping this book to see the light of day. Special thanks are due to Sarah Dancy for her sensitive and precise copy-editing.
This project was financed by the research grant PUT1365 of the Estonian Research Agency as well as the School of Humanities, Tallinn University.
EPIGRAPH
My soul is a hidden orchestra. I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tambours I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is a symphony.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (1991: 8)
INTRODUCTION
Perhaps the most pressing task standing before the philosophy of our times is to articulate a worldview that would not have human beings at its centre, as the ongoing ecological catastrophe, on the one hand, and the emergence of artificial intelligence, on the other, are raising the need to rethink the role of humans in the bigger picture with increasing urgency. At the same time, ground-breaking discoveries in the natural sciences have shattered the very fundamentals of the way in which we think about being as such. It is therefore no wonder that ontological and epistemological debates have again acquired a resonance reaching a much broader audience than the circle of professional philosophers, and have started to engage intellectuals whose primary domain of work is something else, such as social theory, ecology, economy, or even health.
The need to rethink the basics of our ontology is also the primary motivation behind this book. Its aim is to provide a rational discursive framework for a post-anthropocentric1 view of human subjectivity, its ways of manifesting itself in sociocultural identities and ethical responsibilities – a view that would not postulate humans as discrete, strictly bounded individuals, whose perspective on reality would be established as the proverbial measure of all things. My goal is nonetheless to provide the prolegomena, so to speak, for a social philosophy first of all – a discourse and context in which we can discuss primarily human interaction, but without divorcing it from the broader environment, parts of which we are.
I have tried to pursue this goal by developing my theories of subjectivity and culture (Bauman and Raud 2015; Raud 2016), supplementing and contrasting them with ideas coming from various different schools and disciplines of thought.
In other words, this inquiry aims to present a systematic and thoroughgoing philosophical groundwork for the processual/relational turn in social
