Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a recovery of culture

By Freya Matthews, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, 228 pages, paperback, $39.95. Reviewed by Martin Leet in the August 2005 issue.

Help more readers find out about this article
Slashdot   Digg   StumbleUpon   Del.icio.us

Most people are aware that we have, as a society, mistreated the environment. The mistreatment has occurred because we think of nature from a self-interested point of view, as merely another means via which we can pursue our goals and ambitions. To ease our conscience, we might push the half-flush button on the toilet more often, become better at using the recycling bin, or refuse to pack our groceries in plastic bags. Though admirable and worthy, these initiatives often continue to reflect our self-interested outlook. We believe, quite sensibly, that it is better to live in a world whose natural beauties have not been destroyed completely. Our needs are thus broadened beyond a narrow, technological conception of progress and happiness. But it is still our needs to which we are paying exclusive attention. The needs of matter itself are not considered.

Freya Mathews argues that a radical shift in the cultural foundations of western civilization is required to address this lack of concern for matter. Modern civilisation, she says, is based on a basic dualism between mind and matter. Mind is held to be the source of all meaning, creativity and purpose; matter is seen to be inert and malleable, 'conceptually drained of any presence or interiority'. The consequences of this outlook are rationalistic science, profit-driven economics, an ideology of progress, a liberal polity, an ethos of consumerism, and colonialism on the international stage. In short, an endless drive toward control and conquest that seeks out ever more arenas of exploitation and 'improvement'.

Mathews argues that many environmental movements fail to grasp the nature of the present ecological crisis because they remain within the parameters of modern culture. These movements cannot accord proper respect to matter because they continue to act on the basis of the dualism between mind and matter. The urge for a genuine alternative requires a nondualist or 'panpsychist' culture. Such a culture provides matter with its own life and vitality, with an 'innerness', an intrinsic meaning independent of human beings. If our basic attitude toward reality can be changed in this way, the rest follows since we will necessarily replace insensitivity with care and affection. If matter has ends of its own, then we must enlarge our moral conscience beyond the circle of human beings, and beyond even the larger group of sentient beings.

Today, a number of social and political theorists are searching for fruitful ways to 're-enchant' the world. Others believe such a project is a great danger, because it threatens to undermine the civilization we have developed over centuries, particularly our scientific progress and our political freedoms. But modernisation on dualistic terms also poses great dangers, as Mathews points out, not only for the environment, but for human beings themselves. When matter is regarded as inert, and place is held to have little significance, human beings find they are homeless. She detects a 'chronic dissatisfaction' with the present, and a restless pursuit of the 'new' in the hope of finding a small measure of meaning. A panpsychist metaphysics can resolve much of our anxiety, teaching us to 'reinhabit reality'. For Mathews, it does not mean we have to throw away our computers or destroy our skyscrapers and freeways. It involves being grateful to the places in which we live, and treating all matter with reverence.

These arguments are not new. But Mathews' book is novel because it is more than just a sequence of philosophical claims. It is also a series of personal reflections and meditations on past experiences. Such contrasting styles of writing are rarely put side by side in the same work. And rarer still are they combined successfully. This book is an exception. The excerpts from diaries are beautiful and poignant. The recollection of incidents and life-episodes are drawn upon well to explain various points. Abstract propositions often remain unclear and indeterminate, open to a variety of interpretations according to the particular reader's existing beliefs and knowledge. Mathews' willingness to express her more intimate feelings helps the reader to understand exactly what is being said. This openness provides an emotional depth to a book whose style might otherwise have replicated rather than critiqued the 'universalising' and 'quantifying' tendencies of modernity. Many readers may well reject some of the personal opinions and specific recommendations, while taking on board the general arguments. But it is refreshing to have a philosopher come out from the usual hiding place -- impersonal prose and excessive specialisation -- to articulate the lived experiences behind an analysis which stretches across the entire field of the humanities and social sciences.

Citation

• Martin Leet. 'Review: Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a recovery of culture by Freya Matthews' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), August 2005. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 23 May 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• In this sequel to For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, Freya Mathews argues that replacing the materialist premise of modern civilisation with a panpsychist one transforms the entire fabric of culture in profound ways. She claims that the environmental crisis is a symptom of deeper issues facing modern civilisation arising from the loss of the very meaning of culture. To come to grips with this crisis requires a change in the metaphysical premise of modernity deeper than any as yet envisaged even by the radical ecology movement. This is a change with profound implications for the full range of existential questions and not merely for questions regarding our relationship with 'nature'.

Have You Also Read?

• Blush: Faces of Shame
  
  Elspeth Probyn, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, 198 Pages, Paperback, $29.95
  Reviewed by Zoe Anderson in the July 2005 issue.
  
  Shame, in its collective context, has been explored by many writers in recent years in very indirect ways. In the Australian cultural and political milieu shame seems to be the silent 'other' to which we defer and which we deny; a constant, shadowing us in debates on everything from the interaction between indigenous and 'white' Australian histories, to personal anxieties over bodies and self. In this work Probyn attempts to bring together varied manifestations of shame in (mostly) the Australian socio-cultural setting. In doing so, Probyn also riskily endeavours to utilise that troublesome area of 'the personal' within academic writing. Feminist theorists in particular have criticised the ... read more.