Dear friends,
In about an hour, I’m talking to Dr. Norman Wirzba of Duke Divinity School about his books and his “green philosophy.” I would love for you to join us! You can register for the Zoom webinar here.
Dr. Wirzba has written thoughtful books that contemplate everything from philosophy and phenomenology to science and literature. He’s edited and compiled works of Wendell Berry’s writing, and interviewed incredible thinkers and writers like Robert Macfarlane.
This quote, from his book This Sacred Life, captures the way he weaves together all the various strands of philosophy, science, and environmentalism in order to help us see the world—and ourselves—in a starkly different light:
“…[T]he rooted and enmeshed character of human life has prompted some scientists and philosophers to argue that we should refer to creatures not as single organisms but as ‘holobionts’ (from the Greek term that means ‘whole unit of life’), because this locution does a better job communicating the symbiotic character of creaturely life. The symbiosis goes deep, extending through every cell in every body. No cell exists in a finished, preformed, a-historical state, since each cell witnesses to a history of cell interaction and codevelopment. Every seemingly discrete body has only ever come to be as a result of complex processes that include reproduction, respiration, digestion, and decomposition. As Donna Haraway puts it, ‘Critters do not precede their relatings… I us holobiont to mean symbiotic assemblages… which are more like knots of diverse interactive relatings in dynamic complex systems.’ Creatures can’t be understood apart from their relatings, because it is through their relatings that their living happens. This means that people don’t simple have relationships; they are their relationships.”
This Sacred Life, Dr. Norman Wirzba (p. 179)
I have so many questions for Dr. Wirzba, and am very excited about this conversation. Hope you can tune in!
This sounds remarkably like Christian Wiman on Carlo Rovelli‘s "Helgoland“: "Existence is relation. Full stop. If you cannot tell anything about how an object is relating to what is around it, the poof, there is no object.“
Wish I could have joined! Sounds like this would have been a great conversation to listen in on.
I’m trying to register for the zoom, but the verification of my email code never comes through