An enquiry into the onto-logical foundations of sustainability / Augustin BERQUE

The Fall of Man (Albrecht Dürer, 1504)
source

Ce texte développe le propos d’une conférence donnée en français le 9 février 2018 au Centre d’études sur l’Asie de l’Est (CETASE) de l’Université de Montréal, sous le titre “L’apport de la pensée japonaise à une onto-logique de la durabilité”.

An enquiry into the onto-logical foundations of sustainability

by Augustin BERQUE

Abstract – “Onto-logical” is here used in the sense of both ontological and logical. The modern- classical Western paradigm (MCWP), ontologically founded on dualism and logically on the law of excluded middle, has entailed modernity and industrialization. It has come to a dead end not only in biological terms (those of the Sixth Extinction), but also morally by decomposing the social link, and aesthetically by wreaking havoc in the landscape. In a word, the MCWP has decosmized human existence. For re-cosmizing ourselves, technical recipes will not suffice. We need to found anew, both ontologically and logically, our way of being and thinking. That is the aim of mesology (Umweltlehre, fûdoron), which proposes a set of ontological concepts and logical principles enabling us to overcome the MCWP.

Lire la suite