state of nature
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Is the “state of nature” just a relic of early modern philosophy, or is it a warning about our future?
Recent geopolitical upheavals reveal that our rules-based international order is far more fragile than we might care to admit. When the raw logic of power reasserts itself, we are forced to ask: are we witnessing cracks in the ‘thin veneer’ of civilisation?This new blog post, published to accompany the launch of my new book, explores
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AUDIO TALK: Michel Serres and the Parasitic Unmaking of Modernity
This is the audio of a talk I gave at the International Philosophical Seminar (IPS) in June 2022. It begins by showing how Michel Serres rethinks the foundational modern moment of the state of nature, and it then sketches a way of understanding modernity in terms of three recurring moments: a flattening, a division and
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Video: Our fractured state of nature: environment, emancipation, ecnonomy
This is a recording of a paper given at the Australasian Society of Continental Philosophy Conference, December 2021. Paper title “Artificial state of nature: how an aporia of myth shapes our experience of emancipation and the market” Abstract This paper argues that there are two contradictory modern Western understandings of nature, vividly captured in the
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The state of nature as social critique
The state of nature as social critique This is the second post in a series on the state of nature. In the first post I explored why the state of nature matters today. This post considers how the state of nature idea functions as a tool of social critique. It is also available as a
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The State of Nature – An Idea that Shapes Us
This post is the script for a video essay on the state of nature uploaded to the Social Contract Research Network YouTube channel. The material was written to be viewed. Video version: Podcast version: This is a video about a powerful idea. It is an idea that shapes our view of ourselves, and of what