Embodiment, Ecological Philosophy and the Ethics of Listening

This dissertation explores the premise that perception and imagination are intertwined with the Earth System, its many ecosystems, and the dynamic and material elements of the cosmos. This involvement of perception and imagination in an integrated and living planet is considered through the theme of listening. The approach to listening is phenomenological and oriented by an “acoustemological triangle,” which posits a threefold link between sound, ecology and cosmology. Acoustemology understands knowledge to always be in relation to sound, and explains why listening has a forceful power to unsettle habits of knowing.In taking seriously the notion that the Earth System is a primary condition of human experience, I investigate two trajectories of ecological philosophy that claim perception and imagination to be enveloped and enfolded into ecosystems. The first is traced to Abram’s working out of the perceptual implications of the Gaia hypothesis. The second is that of living Indigenous philosophers and scholars inhabiting Turtle Island. These writers have communicated diverse place-based cosmologies wherein land participates in human perception. The work of Kimmerer and Atleo orients the examination of how an ecological understanding of embodiment disrupts the sedimented habits of the settler mind.This dissertation therefore argues that Western phenomenology must recognize its place within Indigenous legal and political traditions in order to continue the dialogue between phenomenology and Indigenous philosophies. I further argue that Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard hold to an ecological cosmology that posits imagination as a vibratory material force governed by the four ancient elements (Fire, Air, Water, Earth). The ethical dimensions of this cosmology are examined in relation to attention, and I argue that through deep and relational ways of listening ecological sensibility is enlarged and expanded. Sonic awareness of place is broadened through attention to the meaning of non-human animal communication. Following Leopold and Morizot, I demonstrate that in listening one can weave together deep time scales of evolutionary change with immediate and affective dimensions of encounters with non-human animals. If the ecological crisis is understood to be a crisis of sensibility, than listening has a special role to play in rejuvenating an environmental ethics of attention.