Poetics of the Earth: Natural History and Human History

by Augustin Berque

Poetics of the Earth is a work of environmental philosophy, based on a synthesis of eastern and western thought on natural and human history. It draws on recent biological research to show how the processes of evolution and history both function according to the same principles.Augustin Berque rejects the separation of nature and culture which he believes lies at the root of the environmental crisis. This book proposes a three stage process of "re-worlding" (moving away from the individualized self to become a part of the common world), "re-concretizing" (understanding the meaning and historical development of words and things) and "re-engaging" (reconsidering the relationship between history and subjectivity at every level of being) in order to bring western thought on nature and culture into sustainable harmony and alignment.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, environmental philosophy, Asian studies and the natural sciences.

214 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 25, 2019

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book thoroughly knocked me of my feet. It goes to the heart of the matter in making our existence on Earth fathomable and it does so with such a grand sweep! The clarity and erudition of Berque's argument are quite simply breathtaking. Although barely 200 pages, this tome has a very high specific weight. It feels like I traversed a really vast intellectual landscape.

I won't try to summarise the argument within the scope of this review. What Berque basically does is to bring our understanding and experience of 'milieu', 'meaning', 'history' and 'evolution' in conceptual alignment. This short online article picks out salient elements of Berque's mesological project in a clear way.

I sense that this work forms a milestone in my personal development in that it seems to offer a synthetic backdrop to, and ontological foundation for the trail of breadcrumbs that I have been following this past decade - with Ingold's Making, Bateson's Mind and Nature, Durham Peters' Marvelous Clouds, Spuybroek's Sympathy of Things, White's Wanderer and his Charts, Hillman's Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, Rajagopalan's Immersive Systemic Knowing, Weber's Enlivenment and Jullien's Silent Transformations as some of the key reference points. The experience is in a way diametrically opposed to the sense of disorientation I experienced when I started to read Nietzsche as an adolescent. Then it felt like bulldozers were making a giant clearing in my brain. Berque's work, on the other hand, feels like it allows me to knit together the rubble that has gradually accumulated in my ganglia. It's exhilarating. But also intimidating. Because I really don't know whether I am up to the challenge.

There is no doubt that Berque's mesology is going to keep me busy for a long time. I also hope to use my doctoral research in urbanism as an opportunity to weave his bio-hermeneutic approach into a coherent and generative action research approach. How to turn that desire into rigorous, lived experience. I don't know. But I sense that behind this challenge there hides a very mundane practice. At bottom, mesology is all about re-concretisation anyway! But how to engage with the territory, its living beings and its non-living things scientifically, but steering clear of both dualism and mysticism? A fascinating question.

By the way, this seems to be the only of Berque's works that is translated in English. I salute Anne Marie Feenberg-Dibon for her heart-warming diligence. This translation is quite obviously a labour of love. Amazingly, I couldn't find any book by Berque in a German translation. It is a mystery why these profound and essential ideas have not gained wider circulation.