The Phoenix:
Reconfiguring Nature

Instructor: Michael Marder Date & Time: October 15, 22, November 5, 11, 19, December 3, 10, 17. 09:00-11:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: For millennia now, humanity has been implicitly conceiving of nature as a phoenix, understanding its cyclical regeneration as a sign of its infinite capacity for rebirth from the ashes of its destruction. Hoping that such a dynamic would continue indefinitely, we keep literally burning the world down while awaiting its phoenix-like resurgence. Both individually and in groups, as consumers and corporations, states and energy companies, we continue to think and act as if nature were immune to irreparable devastation, as if it (and we, ourselves) were a miraculously resilient phoenix. Nevertheless, what is being annihilated today can no longer regerminate and be rejuvenated from ashes, receiving a new lease of life from death, as a result of soil degradation and depletion, desertification, and the expansion of hypoxic areas in the oceans, the catastrophic melting of Arctic ice and suffocating smog filling the atmosphere.

In this Seminar, we delve into the ensuing rift, seeking a philosophy of nature for the twenty-first century in the contradictions, inconsistencies, asynchronies, and deadlocks of our shared predicament. Our work begins with a thorough questioning of the possibility and obstacles in the path of formulating a philosophy of nature in the twenty-first century. We will go through a critical exposition of the myth of the phoenix in relation to nature, from Ancient Egypt and other parts of North Africa to Greece and Rome. Subsequently, we will examine ancient Greek thinking of nature/phusis and German Naturphilosophie through the theoretical lens formed or informed by the figure of the phoenix. Finally, we will examine a selection from key traditions in Hinduism, Confucianism, and Russian “cosmism” in the same light, paying close attention to variations on the figure of the phoenix, replete with theories of immortality, reincarnation, and liberation from cycles of rebirth.

IMAGE: Tile with an Image of a Prince on Horseback, circa the 1850s, Iran.

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