17. Ted Toadvine: Deep Time, the Anthropocene Debate and Eco-Phenomenology

Peter speaks to the philosopher Ted Toadvine about a wide range of environmental themes and issues. Toadvine specialises in environmental ethics and contemporary European philosophy. His new book titled The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology explores the ethical and ecological implications of deep time from a phenomenological perspective and is available now via University of Minnesota Press. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelandbehind Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelandbehindpodcast Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:44) Episode begins (09:57) Why Toadvine wrote The Memory of the World (16:56) Toadvine’s earliest experiences of deep time (23:27) Reconciling humanity and the natural environment (40:57) Technology and nature (46:00) The problem with the Anthropocene (58:10) The problem with biodiversity (01:05:52) The relationship between nature and language (01:10:12) What is eco-phenomenology? (01:15:10) Nature as the horizon of all things (01:20:07) “Nature loves to hide” (01:26:08) Edmund Husserl’s description of the natural world as a “correlate of consciousness” (01:31:48) “The sun did not exist before human beings” (01:42:45) The ethical problems of global sustainability (01:52:23) The relationship between deep time and embodiment (02:03:43) The animals that haunt our humanity from within (02:20:38) Derrida at the end of the world (02:29:06) The cultural obsession with doomsday (02:36:39) The phenomenological perspective of the end of the world (02:47:20) A phenomenology of the elements (02:52:04) Art and the elements