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Lebendigkeit: Eine erotische Ökologie
Nach seinem Erfolgstitel »Alles fühlt« stellt der Biologe und Philosoph Andreas Weber in seinem neuen Buch eine brisante These auf: Kann es sein, dass unser Planet derzeit weniger an einer Umwelt- oder Finanzkrise leidet, sondern an einem Mangel an Liebe seiner Bewohner? Liebe und Erotik nicht verstanden als kitschiges Gefühl, sondern als unbändige Kraft der Fülle und schöpferischen Energie. Klug und überraschend, auf philosophische wie auf ganz alltagspraktische Weise geht Weber der Frage nach, wie wir die Welt berühren und uns von der Welt berühren lassen.
Nur die Liebe kann uns retten
Der Mensch, die Natur und die Biologie der Liebe
Vom Autor des Bestsellers „Alles fühlt”
Nur die Liebe kann uns retten
Der Mensch, die Natur und die Biologie der Liebe
Vom Autor des Bestsellers „Alles fühlt”
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 6, 2014
102 people are currently reading
1362 people want to read
About the author
Andreas Weber
124 books40 followersAndreas Weber is a Berlin-based philosopher, biologist, and writer. He holds degrees in marine biology and cultural studies, and has collaborated with brain researcher and philosopher Francisco Varela. His books in English include: Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics (2013); The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science (2016); and Biopoetics: Towards an Existential Ecology (2016). Weber regularly contributes to major newspapers and magazines, such as National Geographic, GEO, and Die Zeit, and has won a number of awards for his writing. He teaches philosophy at Leuphana University, Lüneburg and at the University of Fine Arts, Berlin. Weber has two children, fifteen and seventeen. He lives in Berlin and Italy.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 1, 2021
I bought Weber's book after reading his essay "What the Meadow Teaches Us" on nautil.us. It's one of the most beautiful and profound essays I've ever read (http://nautil.us/issue/52/the-hive/wh...). In it, Weber writes, "When you immerse yourself in the natural world, you wander a little through the landscape of your soul." As a biophilosopher, Weber looks at the natural world as a poetic space, full of metaphor and spiritual meaning.
When we ask ourselves the "big questions" we eventually arrive at a paradox, something that seems contradictory. Weber likens a paradox to two poles in tension. Light and shadow. Joy and pain. Self and others. At the heart of life is paradox, not dualism. It's not "yes or no" but "yes and no". The "and" signifies both separateness and relatedness between these two poles. This observation gives him a pretty interesting definition of love. He writes, "We should therefore understand love as a practice of relatedness between two poles that cannot be united with another."
Looking at an ecosystem, we can see that maintaining balance, or reciprocity, or equilibrium requires the participation of every organism, in which "every species is dependent on another, that every act of taking is balanced by an act of giving." This is counter to Darwin's theory of evolution, which is based on competition alone (on taking).
But for Weber, this is only one side of the equation of life. Our evolution and transformation are not simply based on taking, but giving. Life is not rooted in greed, but reciprocity. Give and take. We experience a state of "being less alive" when we fail to embody this reciprocity. Without it, all of our relationships fall into ruin. We lose species, habitats, marriages and ourselves.
Although I'm so grateful to Darwin and his theory of evolution, it misses out on side of nature that is generous. That is full of love and paradox. That blurs the line between separate organisms. That reminds us of the bonds we have with each other and with every living thing.
It's a side that we can't afford to miss. It will be our saving grace.
When we ask ourselves the "big questions" we eventually arrive at a paradox, something that seems contradictory. Weber likens a paradox to two poles in tension. Light and shadow. Joy and pain. Self and others. At the heart of life is paradox, not dualism. It's not "yes or no" but "yes and no". The "and" signifies both separateness and relatedness between these two poles. This observation gives him a pretty interesting definition of love. He writes, "We should therefore understand love as a practice of relatedness between two poles that cannot be united with another."
Looking at an ecosystem, we can see that maintaining balance, or reciprocity, or equilibrium requires the participation of every organism, in which "every species is dependent on another, that every act of taking is balanced by an act of giving." This is counter to Darwin's theory of evolution, which is based on competition alone (on taking).
But for Weber, this is only one side of the equation of life. Our evolution and transformation are not simply based on taking, but giving. Life is not rooted in greed, but reciprocity. Give and take. We experience a state of "being less alive" when we fail to embody this reciprocity. Without it, all of our relationships fall into ruin. We lose species, habitats, marriages and ourselves.
Although I'm so grateful to Darwin and his theory of evolution, it misses out on side of nature that is generous. That is full of love and paradox. That blurs the line between separate organisms. That reminds us of the bonds we have with each other and with every living thing.
It's a side that we can't afford to miss. It will be our saving grace.
June 14, 2017
sorry, DNF. Excruciating read.
Quotable quotes:
- Simone Weil: Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.
- Without attachments, no life.
- Our efforts to describe and understand the world are directed away from the experience of being alive and being in relationship.
- I have the impression that love is nothing more than pure aliveness in flesh and blood, with a beating heart and overspread wings.
- Planet has entered the sixth wave of extinction.
- Hadn’t we all become obsessed with an image of love that led us away from aliveness and sucked us down into a spiral of desires in whose middle was nothing but our own optimized selves -cutoff, disconnected and ultimately dead?
- Those who live close to those rocky rivers, running through their valleys, will always be reminded that there was a beginning that no human planned or designed, a beginning in which humans and rolling stones were still one and the same.
- Paul Claudel: “Water is the gaze of the Earth, its instrument for looking at time.”
“Be naked like us, the elements!”
- Loreen Eiseley: ‘For what else have stones been shaped, but to prolong the human presence and to say, soundlessly in lost tongues, We loved the earth, but could not stay.’
- Nothing is fulfilled. But everything seems possible.
- Bruce Birren: “We’re not individuals, we’re colonies” (In the human body, thousands of different players make the meaningful whole possible.....on top of your ten billion body cells, there are 100 billion microbial cells that play a role in our metabolism. ...if we include the microbes genes, then we have 100,000 genes at our disposal, as opposed to just 20,000.)
-Nothing in the rondel of life is ever owned.
- Kalevi Kull, teacher at the University of Estonia is a Socrates of biological self-awareness.
- If you wish for life, you must be prepared to welcome death.....living means learning to die.....light and darkness - both are essential if anything is to be created.
- Octavia Paz: “We are the theater of the embrace of opposites and of their dissolution.”
- Repressed aliveness.
- Naked. Unarmored. Curious. Courageous. Now.
Quotable quotes:
- Simone Weil: Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.
- Without attachments, no life.
- Our efforts to describe and understand the world are directed away from the experience of being alive and being in relationship.
- I have the impression that love is nothing more than pure aliveness in flesh and blood, with a beating heart and overspread wings.
- Planet has entered the sixth wave of extinction.
- Hadn’t we all become obsessed with an image of love that led us away from aliveness and sucked us down into a spiral of desires in whose middle was nothing but our own optimized selves -cutoff, disconnected and ultimately dead?
- Those who live close to those rocky rivers, running through their valleys, will always be reminded that there was a beginning that no human planned or designed, a beginning in which humans and rolling stones were still one and the same.
- Paul Claudel: “Water is the gaze of the Earth, its instrument for looking at time.”
“Be naked like us, the elements!”
- Loreen Eiseley: ‘For what else have stones been shaped, but to prolong the human presence and to say, soundlessly in lost tongues, We loved the earth, but could not stay.’
- Nothing is fulfilled. But everything seems possible.
- Bruce Birren: “We’re not individuals, we’re colonies” (In the human body, thousands of different players make the meaningful whole possible.....on top of your ten billion body cells, there are 100 billion microbial cells that play a role in our metabolism. ...if we include the microbes genes, then we have 100,000 genes at our disposal, as opposed to just 20,000.)
-Nothing in the rondel of life is ever owned.
- Kalevi Kull, teacher at the University of Estonia is a Socrates of biological self-awareness.
- If you wish for life, you must be prepared to welcome death.....living means learning to die.....light and darkness - both are essential if anything is to be created.
- Octavia Paz: “We are the theater of the embrace of opposites and of their dissolution.”
- Repressed aliveness.
- Naked. Unarmored. Curious. Courageous. Now.
January 4, 2022
This book is like sweet wine for my soul. Every page, every sentence reverberates within my body.
April 25, 2025
A stunningly beautiful book, inviting us to follow the insights of phenomenology to its logical conclusion - the world is held together by love. And it is by attending to the erotic interconnectedness of all that is that we can find a way to be held by and to hold the world. My only wonder is, for all of this book’s flirtations with Camus, can Weber’s poetic account of reality provide an explanation, or even consolation, for the profound woundedness of the world?
January 20, 2020
"Erotic" refers to what Weber describes as "love as an ecological phenomenon," the desire of matter to be alive rather than inert-the drive to life, the "intentionless exchange between bodies" that creates the geo- and biospheres. Weber readily combats the view of life as machine and argues that part of the current climate and other human-made problems is due to our forgetting of ourselves as part of a mutual ecosystem, the communal processes of life. He writes of the natural world with clarity, ease, and awe. Don't let the title frighten you away from this one.
August 9, 2018
beauty, beauty, beauty. matter wants to fuck. another favorite.
February 16, 2019
this is the best book ive ever read
February 1, 2023
It is an embodied theology of grace!
May 7, 2019
I read Weber's last book "The Biology of Wonder", and I found his emphasis on enlivenment to be an essential point in understanding how organism's work and function. It is, as he wrote, that which singularizes the relationship between the organism and the objects of its environment.
This book, however, generated opposing feelings in me. Generally speaking, the title, "Matter and Desire" reflected my own ontological views about the nature of matter and the experience of desire. This notion, unfortunately, was not pursued by Weber. Nevertheless, I appreciated many of his views and quoted him extensively, but the more I read on, the more my feelings began to shift, and the more I began to appreciate CS Peirce's important dictum never to mix philosophy with poetry.
As an example of Weber's frequent self-contradictions, throughout the book he emphasizes the reciprocal nature of relations within the environment, but then we read the following:
“One’s own I is, philosophically speaking, radically immanent, wholly and completely a feeling part of the world. It lacks nothing because it is not cut off, but always already in relationship. It is not half, but a whole, and at the same time, it is completely dependent on exchange with others. Because it is immanent, dispersed in the world, it does not have to find resources that an other might deprive it of. Its concern is rather to make this immanence completely visible, which means begetting as much aliveness as possible.” – Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology; pg. 116; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017
And yet, the literature in developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, and all the work coming out of traumatology, relational psychoanalysis, and interpersonal neurobiology says quite the opposite: we can not effectively experience our agency, or are "I", without the reciprocal recognition of an other. Without the other's effort to recognize my affective needs - represented in face, voice, or body language - a persons agency becomes deformed around whatever the other, as interlocuter, rewards. This reality is the exact reverse of Weber's claims: without the other recognition of my needs, I cannot effectively experience my agency, and therefore, become deprived of vital resources. No doubt, Weber's dissociation and flight-into-fancy is probably mobilized by his appreciation of David Abram, who similarly likes to imagine that human beings are more "animal" than anthropological (i.e. social with other humans). This delusion arises from ignoring the beginnings of a humans life and the intermediation of an infants development into an agent through the recognition dynamics with its caregivers - its mother, father, and other's who frequently interact with them. It is through these thousands upon thousands of interactions that a self becomes assembled, and what Weber carelessly ignores and subsequently takes for granted, even allows him to later on find succor in natures bounty. In other words, without the mediation of human others, a human self and agent doesn't grow, and therefore, can never find the solace in nature that Weber can so beautifully write about, but completely misunderstands the ontogeny of.
As a philosopher - of which analysis is of the utmost importance - Weber isn't very good at all. He continuously contradicts himself, and in particular, his views on development and his reliance upon 1960's romanticist psychoanalysts (Jung, Rank, May, Maslow, etc) and recent mainstream therapists continued to irk me. At one point, he makes the following ridiculous assertion:
“We continue to believe that we have to teach our children the crucial things instead of accepting that they already know them…So it is a matter of allowing children to rejoice in this knowledge and claim their wholly individual way of being in relationship with the world. Children only need to be given a few elements of our cultural code in order to do this more fully: written language, mathematical conventions, technical capabilities.” – Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology; pg. 138; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017
This is a downright histrionic assertion. Weber get's lost in his fantasies - or his feelings - and at no point in his conversation on parenting does he abide by his own stricture to "stay in the middle" and balance his critique with an awareness - evidently not having any - that all the time adults, by their very conversations with their toddlers, inform them in a moral way. For example, infantile narcissism and the subsequent feelings of omnipotence aren't even addressed by Weber; as if humans who study this, and thus become quite aware of the problems of narcissism (i.e. mania) are, in Webers eyes (it would seem) too stupid, or even damaged, to realize that they are inhibiting the beauty and supposed "perfection" of a child's enlivenment. It appears Weber's understanding of 'the middle ground' only applies to how we should relate to death - but not to the overwhelming and conflict creating mania that a child's positive feelings i.e. enlivenment, can create for the needs of others.
In short, Weber's attempt to play developmental psychologist only has the effect of enunciating - for those who know better - what his strengths are: nature writing. His views on development and his general, apparently unconscious aggression towards those left unnamed - other biologists, conservatives, etc - leads to a fairly histrionic and exaggerated criticism of human relations.
To return to what I like and appreciate about Weber's writing, truly his use of metaphor sticks out:
“Over and over, water showed me. The Eros of reality begins with touch. There is no life without contact. Without touch, there is no desire, no fulfillment – and no mind. When a light wave changes the structure of my retina, when I stroke the skin of my beloved, or when a nerve cell sends out an electrical impulse by spilling calcium ions, this is always an act of physical seizure. A physical seizure, no different from the coursing waters tossing and dragging the rolling pebbles against each other – the waters of the rivers, this purely inorganic world.” – Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology; pg. 16; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017
His use of the metaphor of touch has the connotation of 'interaction'. For me, as a researcher and theorist of human development, the physical interactions between mother and her infant, and then the visual interactions between the mother's face and the infants gaze, carry the importance Weber ascribes to the quality of 'touch'. Unfortunately, Weber didn't recognize or realize how much information is communicated via the face, the body and the tone of voice, nor properly recognize that rather than the world literally 'emanating' an energy, it is the fundamental symmetry between human brain-minds that creates the energetic impact and 'oomph' that another face, voice or body can contain. There is therefore no physical emanation carrying the power of another face, voice, or body; rather, it is the ideal symmetry hidden behind the layers and layers of developmental i.e. relational trauma, which becomes momentarily broken down, or convserely, reinforced, by the quality of the intentional (feeling) states of the agent who experiences us.
This book, however, generated opposing feelings in me. Generally speaking, the title, "Matter and Desire" reflected my own ontological views about the nature of matter and the experience of desire. This notion, unfortunately, was not pursued by Weber. Nevertheless, I appreciated many of his views and quoted him extensively, but the more I read on, the more my feelings began to shift, and the more I began to appreciate CS Peirce's important dictum never to mix philosophy with poetry.
As an example of Weber's frequent self-contradictions, throughout the book he emphasizes the reciprocal nature of relations within the environment, but then we read the following:
“One’s own I is, philosophically speaking, radically immanent, wholly and completely a feeling part of the world. It lacks nothing because it is not cut off, but always already in relationship. It is not half, but a whole, and at the same time, it is completely dependent on exchange with others. Because it is immanent, dispersed in the world, it does not have to find resources that an other might deprive it of. Its concern is rather to make this immanence completely visible, which means begetting as much aliveness as possible.” – Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology; pg. 116; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017
And yet, the literature in developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, and all the work coming out of traumatology, relational psychoanalysis, and interpersonal neurobiology says quite the opposite: we can not effectively experience our agency, or are "I", without the reciprocal recognition of an other. Without the other's effort to recognize my affective needs - represented in face, voice, or body language - a persons agency becomes deformed around whatever the other, as interlocuter, rewards. This reality is the exact reverse of Weber's claims: without the other recognition of my needs, I cannot effectively experience my agency, and therefore, become deprived of vital resources. No doubt, Weber's dissociation and flight-into-fancy is probably mobilized by his appreciation of David Abram, who similarly likes to imagine that human beings are more "animal" than anthropological (i.e. social with other humans). This delusion arises from ignoring the beginnings of a humans life and the intermediation of an infants development into an agent through the recognition dynamics with its caregivers - its mother, father, and other's who frequently interact with them. It is through these thousands upon thousands of interactions that a self becomes assembled, and what Weber carelessly ignores and subsequently takes for granted, even allows him to later on find succor in natures bounty. In other words, without the mediation of human others, a human self and agent doesn't grow, and therefore, can never find the solace in nature that Weber can so beautifully write about, but completely misunderstands the ontogeny of.
As a philosopher - of which analysis is of the utmost importance - Weber isn't very good at all. He continuously contradicts himself, and in particular, his views on development and his reliance upon 1960's romanticist psychoanalysts (Jung, Rank, May, Maslow, etc) and recent mainstream therapists continued to irk me. At one point, he makes the following ridiculous assertion:
“We continue to believe that we have to teach our children the crucial things instead of accepting that they already know them…So it is a matter of allowing children to rejoice in this knowledge and claim their wholly individual way of being in relationship with the world. Children only need to be given a few elements of our cultural code in order to do this more fully: written language, mathematical conventions, technical capabilities.” – Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology; pg. 138; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017
This is a downright histrionic assertion. Weber get's lost in his fantasies - or his feelings - and at no point in his conversation on parenting does he abide by his own stricture to "stay in the middle" and balance his critique with an awareness - evidently not having any - that all the time adults, by their very conversations with their toddlers, inform them in a moral way. For example, infantile narcissism and the subsequent feelings of omnipotence aren't even addressed by Weber; as if humans who study this, and thus become quite aware of the problems of narcissism (i.e. mania) are, in Webers eyes (it would seem) too stupid, or even damaged, to realize that they are inhibiting the beauty and supposed "perfection" of a child's enlivenment. It appears Weber's understanding of 'the middle ground' only applies to how we should relate to death - but not to the overwhelming and conflict creating mania that a child's positive feelings i.e. enlivenment, can create for the needs of others.
In short, Weber's attempt to play developmental psychologist only has the effect of enunciating - for those who know better - what his strengths are: nature writing. His views on development and his general, apparently unconscious aggression towards those left unnamed - other biologists, conservatives, etc - leads to a fairly histrionic and exaggerated criticism of human relations.
To return to what I like and appreciate about Weber's writing, truly his use of metaphor sticks out:
“Over and over, water showed me. The Eros of reality begins with touch. There is no life without contact. Without touch, there is no desire, no fulfillment – and no mind. When a light wave changes the structure of my retina, when I stroke the skin of my beloved, or when a nerve cell sends out an electrical impulse by spilling calcium ions, this is always an act of physical seizure. A physical seizure, no different from the coursing waters tossing and dragging the rolling pebbles against each other – the waters of the rivers, this purely inorganic world.” – Andreas Weber, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology; pg. 16; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2017
His use of the metaphor of touch has the connotation of 'interaction'. For me, as a researcher and theorist of human development, the physical interactions between mother and her infant, and then the visual interactions between the mother's face and the infants gaze, carry the importance Weber ascribes to the quality of 'touch'. Unfortunately, Weber didn't recognize or realize how much information is communicated via the face, the body and the tone of voice, nor properly recognize that rather than the world literally 'emanating' an energy, it is the fundamental symmetry between human brain-minds that creates the energetic impact and 'oomph' that another face, voice or body can contain. There is therefore no physical emanation carrying the power of another face, voice, or body; rather, it is the ideal symmetry hidden behind the layers and layers of developmental i.e. relational trauma, which becomes momentarily broken down, or convserely, reinforced, by the quality of the intentional (feeling) states of the agent who experiences us.
July 3, 2023
vot see oli üks keeruline raamat. see-eest väga vääga hea raamat. mingi hetk lõike alla joonides mõtlesin, et mis mõte on neid lehekülgi triibutada, kui ma joonin pea nkn kõik lõigud alla. head contenti oli palju.
naljakas, sest kätte juhtusid üsna sarnased raamatud. paralleelselt lugesin Manni "The Art of Lovingut" ja enne Rilke "Letters To A Young Poetit". kõik teosed rääkisid umbkaudselt samast asjast, ent erinevalt. käesolev raamat meeldis mulle kõige enam! Weberit olen ma varem ka pisut sirvinud (tema "Kõik me tunneme", kuid see oli veic liiga pax minu jaoks tollal), kuid palju ma temast ei teadnud. nüüd tean, et resideerub Saksamaal ning reisib palju, õppinud bioloogiat, teab kõigest jne. tore oli raamatus kohata Kalevi Kulli ning tema mõtteid. autor oli käinud Eestis Kaleviga saunas ja teine oli talle kärbseid pähe ajanud ning filosoofilist pläma ajanud. Kulli mõtteid raamatus ka laiendatakse.
õppisin lastekasvatusest, elus püsimisest, taimedest ja loomadest, tähtsaimatest filosoofidest, luuletajatest, elu filosoofiast jne. kõik on seletatud läbi bioloogi prilli - "Erootiline ökoloogia". kõike saab!:
"Üksnes kunst tunnetab metsikust laiaulatuslikult, ilma seda kontrollimata. Üksnes poeesia võtab meie elususe teadmiseks, seda kuidagi paika panemata. Seepärast on kunst elutähtis - ta tagab meie mittekontrollitavuse, milleta meid ähvardaks oht muutuda masinateks ja milleta me kaotaksime oma elususe. [...] Kunst, vähemasti elav kunst, mitte ei kopeeri loodust, vaid toimib nagu loodus, või ei, toimib loodusena. Kunst on metsikuse tööriist ja kehastus. See muudab meid ennast, andes tungile muutuda "loovast tühjusest" võetud hääle."
ning järgmistes peatükkides õpid lastepsühholoogiat, loed luuletusi, leiad v-o vastuse küsimustele: kuidas saad vabaneda elu pingetest, toksilistest suhetest jne. jõhker raamat. võta aega veidi ringi vaadata, nagu meie Tanel Padar kord ütles = ) peace.
naljakas, sest kätte juhtusid üsna sarnased raamatud. paralleelselt lugesin Manni "The Art of Lovingut" ja enne Rilke "Letters To A Young Poetit". kõik teosed rääkisid umbkaudselt samast asjast, ent erinevalt. käesolev raamat meeldis mulle kõige enam! Weberit olen ma varem ka pisut sirvinud (tema "Kõik me tunneme", kuid see oli veic liiga pax minu jaoks tollal), kuid palju ma temast ei teadnud. nüüd tean, et resideerub Saksamaal ning reisib palju, õppinud bioloogiat, teab kõigest jne. tore oli raamatus kohata Kalevi Kulli ning tema mõtteid. autor oli käinud Eestis Kaleviga saunas ja teine oli talle kärbseid pähe ajanud ning filosoofilist pläma ajanud. Kulli mõtteid raamatus ka laiendatakse.
õppisin lastekasvatusest, elus püsimisest, taimedest ja loomadest, tähtsaimatest filosoofidest, luuletajatest, elu filosoofiast jne. kõik on seletatud läbi bioloogi prilli - "Erootiline ökoloogia". kõike saab!:
"Üksnes kunst tunnetab metsikust laiaulatuslikult, ilma seda kontrollimata. Üksnes poeesia võtab meie elususe teadmiseks, seda kuidagi paika panemata. Seepärast on kunst elutähtis - ta tagab meie mittekontrollitavuse, milleta meid ähvardaks oht muutuda masinateks ja milleta me kaotaksime oma elususe. [...] Kunst, vähemasti elav kunst, mitte ei kopeeri loodust, vaid toimib nagu loodus, või ei, toimib loodusena. Kunst on metsikuse tööriist ja kehastus. See muudab meid ennast, andes tungile muutuda "loovast tühjusest" võetud hääle."
ning järgmistes peatükkides õpid lastepsühholoogiat, loed luuletusi, leiad v-o vastuse küsimustele: kuidas saad vabaneda elu pingetest, toksilistest suhetest jne. jõhker raamat. võta aega veidi ringi vaadata, nagu meie Tanel Padar kord ütles = ) peace.
January 23, 2019
Andreas Weber pursues an ambitious goal with Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology. He investigates the principles of reality that we experience and are part of through a science of the heart. It became clear to Weber that we need to completely rethink how we understand life and its significance. It also means that we have understood very little, or have forgotten very much, about life.
Andreas Weber describes being in the world as an erotic encounter. It’s an encounter of meaning through contact, and of being oneself through the significance of others. Weber sees ecology as a relational system, and love as an ecological process.
Andreas Weber writes that 1) to love, we must understand life; 2) to be able to love, we must be able to be alive; and 3) to allow oneself to be fully alive is to love oneself and the world, which is alive. We are currently neglecting this because our efforts to understand the world are directed away from the experience of being alive, from aliveness.
Life is the creative transition from controlled situations to openings that cannot be controlled. Being in tune with life lies between following principles and improvising. Every life-form is an unbroken chain of self-organization. The world is a symphony of relationships between participants that are changed by the interaction.
After two hundred years of trying to bring about Enlightenment, we have put the Earth in a position more precarious than it has been in for the past two hundred million years. It could be that the planet is not suffering from an environmental crisis, but from a shortage of our love. Love is the inside of aliveness.
Andreas Weber describes being in the world as an erotic encounter. It’s an encounter of meaning through contact, and of being oneself through the significance of others. Weber sees ecology as a relational system, and love as an ecological process.
Andreas Weber writes that 1) to love, we must understand life; 2) to be able to love, we must be able to be alive; and 3) to allow oneself to be fully alive is to love oneself and the world, which is alive. We are currently neglecting this because our efforts to understand the world are directed away from the experience of being alive, from aliveness.
Life is the creative transition from controlled situations to openings that cannot be controlled. Being in tune with life lies between following principles and improvising. Every life-form is an unbroken chain of self-organization. The world is a symphony of relationships between participants that are changed by the interaction.
After two hundred years of trying to bring about Enlightenment, we have put the Earth in a position more precarious than it has been in for the past two hundred million years. It could be that the planet is not suffering from an environmental crisis, but from a shortage of our love. Love is the inside of aliveness.
Read
May 30, 2019DNF. I feel terrible giving up on this book because there are some gems in here. Unfortunately, getting to these shining bits felt like digging through a pile words and it just made me exhausted.
Read
December 30, 2025Flat epistemology. One key argument is that our sensory capabilities and what we call 'cognition' has a correlate in all living things with bodies. As much a (bio)poetic overview of the world as an embodied companion guide to global change biology.
Oddly striking chapter on attachment in childhood development that was unexpected but makes a good point about the dangers on non-reciprocal enjoyment of the other's life and its effects. I've been thinking a lot about meadows over the last few months, so the frequent discussion of the ecology of meadows was really nice too.
See also: Merleau-Ponty M as discussed in Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy.
I should read more: Stuart Kauffman and Gregory Bateson for sensory methods and materialist approaches in human geography + Hans Jonas
References worked in nicely: Rilke, Richard Rohr, Christopher Alexander, and of course Octavio Paz — great because I think Paz and Rilke overlap with thoughts on love and loving.
I should revisit my notes & highlights.
Oddly striking chapter on attachment in childhood development that was unexpected but makes a good point about the dangers on non-reciprocal enjoyment of the other's life and its effects. I've been thinking a lot about meadows over the last few months, so the frequent discussion of the ecology of meadows was really nice too.
See also: Merleau-Ponty M as discussed in Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy.
I should read more: Stuart Kauffman and Gregory Bateson for sensory methods and materialist approaches in human geography + Hans Jonas
References worked in nicely: Rilke, Richard Rohr, Christopher Alexander, and of course Octavio Paz — great because I think Paz and Rilke overlap with thoughts on love and loving.
I should revisit my notes & highlights.
November 9, 2025
This book had some great messages, but was definitely laborious to get through. The writing style made it hard to focus on the messages being delivered, and sometimes I felt like it could of been condensed down a lot. My overall takeaway was that love and ecology are interconnected and humans have the impulse to establish connections, yet we disregard love as a principle of reality and this is truly the core of our global crisis leading to species loss. Our belief that the world is a dead mechanism is controlled through economic efficiency and will ultimately be our downfall. While it was tough to get through, there were some notable quotes that I wrote down:
- True love, I thought, means to be fully alive
- Nature is such apart of me—namely the part that sees me because it is not me, and that therefore understands the part of me that I am, but lack: my psyche, which is plant
- …and thought that I would have to be in love in order to have a feeling adequate for all of this.
- The body is the most sensitive instrument imaginable for providing information about life
- Anyone who has ever been lost in the wilderness can empathize with this feeling. Dying is a possibility! Nature does not hide this fact. On the contrary, it sculpts with it: every currently living species exists at the expense of hundreds of others that have long Been lost.
- Many people who live in balance with the natural world, feel that they receive gifts from it, and also feel prompted to give to it. This is the core of the archaic recipe for the protection of natural resources.
- It is the way children feel when they feed a hungry duck. The game that makes both parties happy because it consists of nothing more than the exchange of gifts.
- True love, I thought, means to be fully alive
- Nature is such apart of me—namely the part that sees me because it is not me, and that therefore understands the part of me that I am, but lack: my psyche, which is plant
- …and thought that I would have to be in love in order to have a feeling adequate for all of this.
- The body is the most sensitive instrument imaginable for providing information about life
- Anyone who has ever been lost in the wilderness can empathize with this feeling. Dying is a possibility! Nature does not hide this fact. On the contrary, it sculpts with it: every currently living species exists at the expense of hundreds of others that have long Been lost.
- Many people who live in balance with the natural world, feel that they receive gifts from it, and also feel prompted to give to it. This is the core of the archaic recipe for the protection of natural resources.
- It is the way children feel when they feed a hungry duck. The game that makes both parties happy because it consists of nothing more than the exchange of gifts.
February 12, 2022
I clicked on the choose shelves button and then chose more shelves for this book than I have ever chosen for any other book. Weber is new to me but his ideas about the our relational life, our aliveness, expressed in the title as Matter and Desire, are explored in depth. And what I like about this book is that Weber EXPLORES aliveness using all the tools at his command, including science, theology, psychology, spirituality, language in both prose and poetry. Weber understands the world as relational, thus he works hard to focus on the unity within diversity, the ecology of life rather than separate pieces of life thus reducing it to parts the sum of which does not create a greater whole. Perhaps he is trying to help us experience the ecology of life rather than think about it. That would fit with his description of life - and death - as poetry. I found it to be well written and profound as well as beautiful and simple; like good poetry. I highly recommend Matter and Desire to anyone open to the OTHER.
August 29, 2021
After the passing of Francisco Varela, I feared for the direction of neurophenomenology, aka enactivism. Many of the recent texts I read veered into dry, academic writing, lacking life and vitality. Where Varela and Maturana inspired, the post-Varela writings defended and sought to refine ways of thinking rather than enlivening.
Andreas Weber makes it clear that the aliveness of Varela is, well, still alive. This erotic ecology, or poetic materialism brings us into a dynamic world of paradoxes where all that matters is aliveness and our understanding of our own desires and the universe's desire for us.
The writing... beautiful and the references not only to Varela, but to Camus, Krishnamurti, the Daodejing--and even a surprise reference to Marshall Rosenberg on the last page--couldn't have been any closer to my heart.
I'm in love.
Andreas Weber makes it clear that the aliveness of Varela is, well, still alive. This erotic ecology, or poetic materialism brings us into a dynamic world of paradoxes where all that matters is aliveness and our understanding of our own desires and the universe's desire for us.
The writing... beautiful and the references not only to Varela, but to Camus, Krishnamurti, the Daodejing--and even a surprise reference to Marshall Rosenberg on the last page--couldn't have been any closer to my heart.
I'm in love.
June 14, 2017
This book has a mixed feeling of superstitious and philosophical questions, answers, explanations and interpretations. Emotions are taking control, yet a reasonable thinking based on mercy and love to the world, the entire planet. It is a virtue to spread messages like this to readers.
The essence of the book is good, but somehow I find the content was put in between positions, an awkward being, hard to understand or say, to believe to the author, because the feelings are too unreal, intangible and implacable.
Through the reading, a missionary figure from the author side rises to me as if the author talks in a religious way. Not sure if it is compatible to the book, but it certainly confuses me somehow.
The essence of the book is good, but somehow I find the content was put in between positions, an awkward being, hard to understand or say, to believe to the author, because the feelings are too unreal, intangible and implacable.
Through the reading, a missionary figure from the author side rises to me as if the author talks in a religious way. Not sure if it is compatible to the book, but it certainly confuses me somehow.
October 6, 2019
The writing style is definitely not my cup of tea. If the same message was delivered in a different way, I would have likely given it a higher rating, but this mix of poetry, philosophy, autobiography and science was at times laborious to get through.
Weber cites a wide range of writers, from the philosophers of old, down to Alan Watts, Marshall Rosenberg and the like. While I agree with practically all of Weber's views, I'm not sure I got any new insights from it, except for a couple of interesting quotes. This book might be meant more for someone who still needs convincing that humanity's future lies in a closer connection to nature than the current dogma od 'progress' has forced upon us. I, however, was already sold before picking up the book.
Weber cites a wide range of writers, from the philosophers of old, down to Alan Watts, Marshall Rosenberg and the like. While I agree with practically all of Weber's views, I'm not sure I got any new insights from it, except for a couple of interesting quotes. This book might be meant more for someone who still needs convincing that humanity's future lies in a closer connection to nature than the current dogma od 'progress' has forced upon us. I, however, was already sold before picking up the book.
November 12, 2024
I really wanted to like this book, before, during and after reading it, but there was something missing, something of its essence that might have been lost in translation. Some of the ideas in the book have stayed with me, but in terms of connecting with the soul of the author through his words.. it left me with desire.
July 5, 2025
A very beautifully written book. Each word is chosen intentionally, and builds upon itself nicely. We are all here as part of a larger picture, and all that is there is to be genuine and build relationships with all beings.
May 21, 2018
Demanding and rewarding.
January 4, 2021
I very highly recommend this book!
September 23, 2021
enjoyed...
February 16, 2026
A beautiful book.
March 22, 2025
Intensely rewarding. Dense text: colouring very yellow because of my text marker. Weber formulates a philosophy that is lyrical and fundamentally original. The fact that he is also a biologist has given him the opportunity to make a concept like Lebendigkeit (liveliness, vitality) into a central element of his groundbreaking way of thinking. It has made me feel thoroughly happy like when I read Spinoza's Ethics. It offers tremendous consolation in this era when nature and our ecological continuity are so much under attack. We can start to have a grasp of what to think and do in response to these threats. This philosophy offers hope and perspective for the mind and the body. It is fit for the Anthropocene.
'Incomparable things said incomparably well'.
'Incomparable things said incomparably well'.
May 31, 2018
Brilliant meditation on our connectedness to the Earth and the spirituality that comes from that.
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