2004
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Volume 116, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 0002-5275
  • E-ISSN: 2352-1244

Abstract

Abstract

This paper investigates the phenomenological importance of anthropogenic climate change by focussing on the double meaning of ‘climate’, namely (1) average weather condition and (2) social mood or atmosphere (e.g. political climate). The relation between global heating and social mood or atmosphere is investigated through a rethinking of Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of moods and Peter Sloterdijk’s elaboration of Heideggerian phenomenology into his philosophy of spheres. Guided by Heidegger’s insight into the world disclosing function of moods, especially existential anxiety, we investigate whether climate anxiety has a similar disclosing function. We argue that climate anxiety involves an ecological world disclosure. We then turn to Sloterdijk’s elaboration of Heidegger’s phenomenology of moods into a wide-ranging theory of intersubjective attunement and life-world constitution in intersubjective ‘spheres’. Sloterdijk speaks of an intraspheric ‘greenhouse effect’, meaning that both the physical and the social climate within a sphere must be adequate for interhuman development. We argue that the catastrophic effects of runaway global heating threaten this intraspheric greenhouse effect, causing a fundamental increase in interhuman conflictuality. Finally, this paper also engages critically with Vincent Blok’s post-phenomenological, speculative ecology of the ‘earth in itself’ as necessitated by the disruptive event of climate change. Contra Blok it is argued that phenomenology is capable of uncovering the philosophical meaning of climate change, especially given the internal connection between climate as meteorological phenomenon and climate as world disclosing mood.

© Peter Sas
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/content/journals/10.5117/ANTW2024.3.008.SAS
2024-09-01
2024-10-19
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/content/journals/10.5117/ANTW2024.3.008.SAS
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Keyword(s): capitalism; climate anxiety; climate change; conflictuality; ecology; existential anxiety; Martin Heidegger; Peter Sloterdijk; phenomenology; socialisation; Vincent Blok

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