Cooling Down Global Warming: Revisiting Sartre and Heidegger on this Modern Day Challenge Öffentlichkeit
Housman, Benjamin Henry (2011)
Published
Abstract
Global warming is a phenomenon that threatens our very existence
as humans on this earth. Our
finitude both as individuals and as a collective species resonates
when we reflect, typically in
dread, on the complex technological age that renders the world as
standing reserve and out of our
control; as a place that appears to be approaching its collapse
should we continue living the lives
many of us currently live. The question, then, is: Who is
responsible for the current crisis we
face and, likewise, how can we go about changing the path of global
warming? This paper will
posit that both the individual and the collective (i.e. totality of
individuals constituting a social
ensemble) are responsible for global warming and that a more
unified social whole characteristic
of a Sartrean group must be formed in order for progress to be
made. This paper will also
examine the loss of our essence as thought-worthy beings due to our
blind participation in this
technological, industrialized culture that so heavily contributes
to global warming. We must
'step back' to our essential space and revive our meditative
thinking that has been overshadowed
by the calculative thinking dominating our world today. Ultimately,
through educating the
public on the science behind global warming and reviving our
essence as thought-worthy beings,
a stronger ethic of care towards the environment may emerge and
policy change may be realized.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………............................................1
I. Al for One and One for All!
A. The Early Sartre:
Decisions…Decisions…Decisions…………………………………………………………………………...5
B. Sartre's Existentialism is a
Humanism………………………………………………………………………………………….......9
C. The Later Sartre: The Col ective, the Group, and the
Institution………………………………………….……….12
D. Jaspers' Four Froms of Guilt: How Are We
Guilty?................................................................18
E. Time for Progress: Resisting Bad Faith and Embracing a "Green
Revolution"…………………………………..23
II. Technology and Global Warming: Heidegger's Cal for Thinking to
Confront the Danger
A. 'The Thing' and 'Positionality': Living in a Distanceless and
Positioned
World………………………………..26
B. 'The Danger' and 'The
Turn'…………………………………………………………………………………………………………....30
C. 'Seminar in Le Thor': The Prevalence of Consumption and
Replacability………………………………………..35
E. The 'Step Back' as a 'Ste Towards' Confronting Global
Warming……………………………………………….……41
F. How to Say 'Yes' and 'No' to
Technology…………………………………………………………………………………….….44
III. Pragmatism: The Necessity for Green Policy and Education
A. Reconciling Pluralistic Attitudes and Scientific
Opinion……………………………………………………………..……47
B. Ignorance is Bliss?.... . ........................... .... ...
.... ....
..................................................52
C. Spreading an Environmental
Ethic…………………………………………………………………………………………………..55
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…61
Works Cited and
Consulted………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…64
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