Jochem Zwier - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Jochem Zwier
Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, 2019
This article is made publicly available in the institutional repository of Wageningen University ... more This article is made publicly available in the institutional repository of Wageningen University and Research, under the terms of article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, also known as the Amendment Taverne. This has been done with explicit consent by the author. Article 25fa states that the author of a short scientific work funded either wholly or partially by Dutch public funds is entitled to make that work publicly available for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work. This publication is distributed under The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) 'Article 25fa implementation' project. In this project research outputs of researchers employed by Dutch Universities that comply with the legal requirements of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act are distributed online and free of cost or other barriers in institutional repositories. Research outputs are distributed six months after their first online publication in the original published version and with proper attribution to the source of the original publication. You are permitted to download and use the publication for personal purposes. All rights remain with the author(s) and / or copyright owner(s) of this work. Any use of the publication or parts of it other than authorised under article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright act is prohibited. Wageningen University & Research and the author(s) of this publication shall not be held responsible or liable for any damages resulting from your (re)use of this publication.
Human Studies, 2019
This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On t... more This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger's thought on technology with Georges Bataille's consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger's account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019
Against this general backdrop, the idea for the present special issue on the theme "Nature strike... more Against this general backdrop, the idea for the present special issue on the theme "Nature strikes back! Thinking the Asymmetry of the Human Relationship to Planet Earth" arose. For ourselves, it followed rather naturally from our collective efforts to engage in a philosophical questioning of technology in light of the Anthropocene. In the course of organising several conference-sessions and publishing a special issue on this topic in the journal Techné: Research in Philosophy of Technology (see Lemmens et al. 2017), we increasingly felt that a more elaborate engagement between philosophy of technology, environmental philosophy, and environmental ethics was in order. Of course, the concept of the Anthropocene evidently involves a conjunction of technology and nature, given how it is generally understood as the earthly epoch in which, as Jan Zalasiewicz and his colleagues put it, "natural and human forces [are] intertwined, so that the fate of the one determines the fate of the other" (Zalasiewicz et al. 2010: 2231). Although the meaning and implications of this intertwinement were (and remain) central, we hitherto predominantly addressed them from the perspective of philosophy of technology. As such, despite not truly attempting, in the words of Horace, to "drive nature out with a pitchfork", she kept coming back nonetheless. This recurrence of nature accordingly prompted the dissemination of a call for papers on the theme of "nature strikes back", which we consider to be one of the core experiences that informs contemporary environmental thought. Think of global warming, reduced biodiversity, the sixth mass extinction, increasingly frequent extreme weather events, draughts, floods, crop failure, declining permafrost, rapidly changing precipitation-patterns, etcetera ad nauseam-and it becomes clear how these are increasingly experienced as symptoms of some kind of natural retaliation, a sentiment that we also find expressed in James Lovelock's "revenge of Gaia" (2006), Amitav Ghosh's "The Great Derangement" (2016) or Isabelle Stengers' "intrusion of Gaia" (2015: 137). Importantly, the Anthropocene renders it impossible to interpret such 'striking back' in all too modernist terms of two radically opposing factions, as if human subjects and their technological accoutrements are now 'struck back' by a nature that is essentially different from them. Rather, in light of the osmosis between technology and nature witnessed in the Anthropocene (cf. Cera 2017), coming to terms with nature striking back cannot get around the Anthropocenic adagio that "nature is us" (Crutzen and Schwägerl 2011). It was for this reason that the call for contributions included the task of "thinking the asymmetry of the human relationship to planet earth". On the one hand, as the phrase "nature is us" concisely captures, this relationship has evidently become symmetric. This is to say that since what Earth System Scientists refer to as "The Great Acceleration", industrialized humanity has become a force to be reckoned with on a planetary scale, a geo-force exerting a domineering influence on the dynamics of the Earth system in which it partakes. Defined as "the suite of interacting physical, chemical and biological global-scale cycles (…) that provide the life-support system for life at the surface of the planet", the Earth System thereby expressly "includes humans, our societies, and our activities; thus, humans are not an outside force perturbing an otherwise natural system but rather an integral and interacting part of the Earth System itself" (Steffen et al. 2007: 615).
Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 2017
Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 2017
In this paper, we argue that the Anthropocene is relevant for philosophy of technology because it... more In this paper, we argue that the Anthropocene is relevant for philosophy of technology because it makes us sensitive to the ontological dimension of contemporary technology. In §1, we show how the Anthropocene has ontological status insofar as the Anthropocenic world appears as managerial resource to us as managers of our planetary oikos. Next, we confront this interpretation of the Anthropocene with Heidegger’s notion of “Enframing” to suggest that the former offers a concrete experience of Heidegger’s abstract, notoriously difficult, and allegedly totalitarian concept (§2). In consequence, technology in the Anthropocene cannot be limited to the ontic domain of artefacts, but must be acknowledged to concern the whole of Being. This also indicates how the Anthropocene has a technical origin in an ontological sense, which is taken to imply that the issue of human responsibility must be primarily understood in terms of responsivity. In the final section (§3), we show how the Anthropoc...
Philosophy & Technology, 2016
This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology.... more This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger's understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory, which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings (i.e.,technologies) involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger's questioning of technology as belonging to Bclassical philosophy of technology,^postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2015
In this paper we inquire into the fundamental assumptions that underpin the ideal of the Bio-Base... more In this paper we inquire into the fundamental assumptions that underpin the ideal of the Bio-Based Economy (BBE) as it is currently developed. By interpreting the BBE from the philosophical perspective on economy developed by Georges Bataille, we demonstrate how the BBE is fully premised on a thinking of scarcity. As a result, the BBE exclusively frames economic problems in terms of efficient production, endeavoring to exclude a thinking of abundance and wastefulness. Our hypothesis is that this not only entails a number of internal tensions and inconsistencies with regard to the ideal of BBE, but ultimately undermines the ideal itself, by pushing purported regenerativity into a cataclysmic and terminal discharge. We here point to the strategies that the BBE employs in this exclusion, the fundamental assumptions regarding the relation between energy and economy that underpin this endeavor, as well as to the resulting inconsistencies and their catastrophic consequences. We finally argue for the introduction of the presently excluded question of abundance and wastefulness and explore the implications of such a question for the ideal of a zero-waste humanity.
Environmental Humanities
In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently p... more In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently pushed beyond its many physical implications (e.g., global warming, reduced biodiversity) and social significance (e.g., climate justice, economics, migration) to interpret the Anthropocene metaphysically. According to such interpretations, the Anthropocene imposes nothing less than a wholly new understanding of the world. This raises the question regarding the character of such an imposition. To develop this question, this article discusses three metaphysical interpretations of the Anthropocene: Clive Hamilton’s, Timothy Morton’s, and Bruno Latour’s. Among many voices today, these authors are specifically relevant because they predominantly correlate the imposition of a new, nonmodern world with the scientific object “Earth” as it is developed in Earth system science. The purpose here is to elucidate the ways in which this correlation is made, and to inquire after the role of science—a m...
Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, 2019
This article is made publicly available in the institutional repository of Wageningen University ... more This article is made publicly available in the institutional repository of Wageningen University and Research, under the terms of article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, also known as the Amendment Taverne. This has been done with explicit consent by the author. Article 25fa states that the author of a short scientific work funded either wholly or partially by Dutch public funds is entitled to make that work publicly available for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work. This publication is distributed under The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) 'Article 25fa implementation' project. In this project research outputs of researchers employed by Dutch Universities that comply with the legal requirements of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act are distributed online and free of cost or other barriers in institutional repositories. Research outputs are distributed six months after their first online publication in the original published version and with proper attribution to the source of the original publication. You are permitted to download and use the publication for personal purposes. All rights remain with the author(s) and / or copyright owner(s) of this work. Any use of the publication or parts of it other than authorised under article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright act is prohibited. Wageningen University & Research and the author(s) of this publication shall not be held responsible or liable for any damages resulting from your (re)use of this publication.
Human Studies, 2019
This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On t... more This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger's thought on technology with Georges Bataille's consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger's account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019
Against this general backdrop, the idea for the present special issue on the theme "Nature strike... more Against this general backdrop, the idea for the present special issue on the theme "Nature strikes back! Thinking the Asymmetry of the Human Relationship to Planet Earth" arose. For ourselves, it followed rather naturally from our collective efforts to engage in a philosophical questioning of technology in light of the Anthropocene. In the course of organising several conference-sessions and publishing a special issue on this topic in the journal Techné: Research in Philosophy of Technology (see Lemmens et al. 2017), we increasingly felt that a more elaborate engagement between philosophy of technology, environmental philosophy, and environmental ethics was in order. Of course, the concept of the Anthropocene evidently involves a conjunction of technology and nature, given how it is generally understood as the earthly epoch in which, as Jan Zalasiewicz and his colleagues put it, "natural and human forces [are] intertwined, so that the fate of the one determines the fate of the other" (Zalasiewicz et al. 2010: 2231). Although the meaning and implications of this intertwinement were (and remain) central, we hitherto predominantly addressed them from the perspective of philosophy of technology. As such, despite not truly attempting, in the words of Horace, to "drive nature out with a pitchfork", she kept coming back nonetheless. This recurrence of nature accordingly prompted the dissemination of a call for papers on the theme of "nature strikes back", which we consider to be one of the core experiences that informs contemporary environmental thought. Think of global warming, reduced biodiversity, the sixth mass extinction, increasingly frequent extreme weather events, draughts, floods, crop failure, declining permafrost, rapidly changing precipitation-patterns, etcetera ad nauseam-and it becomes clear how these are increasingly experienced as symptoms of some kind of natural retaliation, a sentiment that we also find expressed in James Lovelock's "revenge of Gaia" (2006), Amitav Ghosh's "The Great Derangement" (2016) or Isabelle Stengers' "intrusion of Gaia" (2015: 137). Importantly, the Anthropocene renders it impossible to interpret such 'striking back' in all too modernist terms of two radically opposing factions, as if human subjects and their technological accoutrements are now 'struck back' by a nature that is essentially different from them. Rather, in light of the osmosis between technology and nature witnessed in the Anthropocene (cf. Cera 2017), coming to terms with nature striking back cannot get around the Anthropocenic adagio that "nature is us" (Crutzen and Schwägerl 2011). It was for this reason that the call for contributions included the task of "thinking the asymmetry of the human relationship to planet earth". On the one hand, as the phrase "nature is us" concisely captures, this relationship has evidently become symmetric. This is to say that since what Earth System Scientists refer to as "The Great Acceleration", industrialized humanity has become a force to be reckoned with on a planetary scale, a geo-force exerting a domineering influence on the dynamics of the Earth system in which it partakes. Defined as "the suite of interacting physical, chemical and biological global-scale cycles (…) that provide the life-support system for life at the surface of the planet", the Earth System thereby expressly "includes humans, our societies, and our activities; thus, humans are not an outside force perturbing an otherwise natural system but rather an integral and interacting part of the Earth System itself" (Steffen et al. 2007: 615).
Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 2017
Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 2017
In this paper, we argue that the Anthropocene is relevant for philosophy of technology because it... more In this paper, we argue that the Anthropocene is relevant for philosophy of technology because it makes us sensitive to the ontological dimension of contemporary technology. In §1, we show how the Anthropocene has ontological status insofar as the Anthropocenic world appears as managerial resource to us as managers of our planetary oikos. Next, we confront this interpretation of the Anthropocene with Heidegger’s notion of “Enframing” to suggest that the former offers a concrete experience of Heidegger’s abstract, notoriously difficult, and allegedly totalitarian concept (§2). In consequence, technology in the Anthropocene cannot be limited to the ontic domain of artefacts, but must be acknowledged to concern the whole of Being. This also indicates how the Anthropocene has a technical origin in an ontological sense, which is taken to imply that the issue of human responsibility must be primarily understood in terms of responsivity. In the final section (§3), we show how the Anthropoc...
Philosophy & Technology, 2016
This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology.... more This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger's understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory, which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings (i.e.,technologies) involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger's questioning of technology as belonging to Bclassical philosophy of technology,^postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2015
In this paper we inquire into the fundamental assumptions that underpin the ideal of the Bio-Base... more In this paper we inquire into the fundamental assumptions that underpin the ideal of the Bio-Based Economy (BBE) as it is currently developed. By interpreting the BBE from the philosophical perspective on economy developed by Georges Bataille, we demonstrate how the BBE is fully premised on a thinking of scarcity. As a result, the BBE exclusively frames economic problems in terms of efficient production, endeavoring to exclude a thinking of abundance and wastefulness. Our hypothesis is that this not only entails a number of internal tensions and inconsistencies with regard to the ideal of BBE, but ultimately undermines the ideal itself, by pushing purported regenerativity into a cataclysmic and terminal discharge. We here point to the strategies that the BBE employs in this exclusion, the fundamental assumptions regarding the relation between energy and economy that underpin this endeavor, as well as to the resulting inconsistencies and their catastrophic consequences. We finally argue for the introduction of the presently excluded question of abundance and wastefulness and explore the implications of such a question for the ideal of a zero-waste humanity.
Environmental Humanities
In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently p... more In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently pushed beyond its many physical implications (e.g., global warming, reduced biodiversity) and social significance (e.g., climate justice, economics, migration) to interpret the Anthropocene metaphysically. According to such interpretations, the Anthropocene imposes nothing less than a wholly new understanding of the world. This raises the question regarding the character of such an imposition. To develop this question, this article discusses three metaphysical interpretations of the Anthropocene: Clive Hamilton’s, Timothy Morton’s, and Bruno Latour’s. Among many voices today, these authors are specifically relevant because they predominantly correlate the imposition of a new, nonmodern world with the scientific object “Earth” as it is developed in Earth system science. The purpose here is to elucidate the ways in which this correlation is made, and to inquire after the role of science—a m...