Abstract
Individual rationality continues to underpin political policy making and economics, despite the sustained critique from many realms of philosophy, psychology, and physics. In this chapter I look at three of these realms; quantum physics, feminist embodiment, and Maˉori philosophy to rethink classical individualism and how it can be replaced with a more integrated, environmental symbiosis. Quantum physics offers us entanglement, and the observer effect, which demonstrates that at the most basic levels, the world is better understood as waves of interference, rather than discrete ‘objects’. The feminist critique of Cartesian individualism dissolves the harsh separation between subject and object, culture and nature. Maˉori concepts of whenua and whakapapa are an ancient taxonomy that integrates the genealogy of the human with the genealogy of the earth. These three modes of understanding explicate how integrated we each are, how communal speech, history, and environment together provokes a new orientation for policy and economics, which positions the environment at its heart, instead of ignoring it as an ‘externality.’ The significance of these ideas can shift the horizon of thought, and extend the philosophy of politics and policy to an eco-social paradigm.
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Irwin, R. (2023). Physics, Feminism and Whakapapa; Integrating Eco-Subjectivity After the Enlightenment. In: Weir, L. (eds) Philosophy as Practice in the Ecological Emergency. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94391-2_3
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