Toward Ecosophy

A while back, rather to my surprise, I fielded an invitation from philosophy professor (and retro technology aficionado) Richard Polt to submit an essay for an academic volume titled The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene. Some months thereafter, even more to my surprise, I heard that my essay, "The Coming of the Post-Axial Age," had been accepted for publication, alongside contributions by professors of philosophy in Europe and North America. To top it all off, my contributor's copy came in today's mail: a nicely produced and intellectually meaty volume. I'm sorry to say it's priced at current academic-press rates, which are absurdly high; if you work for a university library or have plenty of cash to spare, you can order a copy here. 

(No, this isn't the cover art, though it could very well have been. I couldn't find an online cover image in a format that Dreamwidth can handle.) 

The conventions of academic publishing (and the details of my contract) preclude my publishing the essay elsewhere for a while, but it was an interesting challenge to ask myself what I'd say to professional philosophers in the present day, when philosophy has lost the ample public interest it once had (as late as the 1950s, a new book by Sartre was a significant cultural event) and the institutional arrangements that support philosophy as an academic profession are cracking at the seams as western civilization settles deeper into decline. It was also interesting to take on Karl Jaspers' notion of the Axial Age and its consequences -- among the more widely accepted versions, among intellectuals these days, of the mythology of progress -- and to try to set the rise of philosophy itself into a historical framework that doesn't bow to progress and the stealth teleology that pervades it. 

I have no way of knowing if any similar opportunity will ever come my way again, but I hope it does -- and I hope this essay helps get philosophers thinking about what it means to pursue their craft in an age when faith in progress is canceling itself out.