Freya Mathews
Biographic Data
| ID | 1616614 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Freya Mathews |
| GIVEN NAMES | Freya |
| FAMILY NAME | Mathews |
| SIGNATURE | MATHEWS F |
| AFFILIATIONS | La Trobe University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8819-8696 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Ecophilosophy as a Way of Life
The contemporary figure of the ecophilosopher perhaps holds the seeds of something that transcends philosophy in its current strictly academic, professionalized, indeed corporatized mode. This is a "something" that could, on the one hand, tie philosophy back to its own ancient, life-giving, but now lost, root in the Graeco-Roman world, and on the other hand, open it up to people searching outside the academy for a shared and reflective way of lif…
The Dao of Civilization: A Letter to China
Environmental struggles in Aboriginal homelands: Indigenizing conservation in Australia
Many large remaining areas of high conservation value currently lie within Indigenous homelands. The attempts of conservationists to protect such areas from industrial development sometimes come into conflict with the contrary wish of Indigenous populations to benefit from such development. How, in such cases, can the claims of Earth communities to ecological justice be reconciled with those of Traditional Owner communities to Indigenous justice?…
Elephants as refugees
Habitat loss and climate change are displacing animals at alarming rates. In response, authors in the humanities and the sciences have described animals rhetorically as ‘refugees’. Such a description implies a strong call to action. However, the term ‘refugee’ may serve as more than mere rhetoric, indicating in a more literal way the response most proper to some persecuted, traumatized and displaced animals, and prioritizing those animals. We tes…
The Dilemma of Dualism
This chapter explains that the roots of dualism lie not merely in historical forms of the politics of gender but, insidiously, in the very activity of theorizing itself. If this is true, then counter-dualist theories, and even emancipatory forms of politics based on them, will not help us shake off the shackles of dualism. As long as ecofeminism continues to define itself in theoretical terms, as philosophical discourse, the consciousness of ecof…
Come with Old Khayyam and Leave the Wise to Talk’
In the last thirty years, many ecophilosophies have come and gone. Visions of ecological reform and re-alignment have been rolling plentifully off the presses. Yet the ecological crisis, globally and at home, has only worsened. Why have ecophilosophical ideas failed to change social patterns of behaviour to any significant degree? Can theory change behaviour? Or is theory itself the problem? Is it theory which distances us from reality and thereb…
Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene
The recent 10,000 year history of climatic stability on Earth that enabled the rise of agriculture and domestication, the growth of cities, numerous technological revolutions, and the emergence of modernity is now over. We accept that in the latest phase of this era, modernity is unmaking the stability that enabled its emergence. Over the 21st century severe and numerous weather disasters, scarcity of key resources, major changes in environments,…
The Anguish of Wildlife Ethics
As an environmental philosopher I had long been aware of dilemmas between animal ethics and ecological ethics, but now, as the manager of my own biodiversity reserve, I was facing these dilemmas in a more gut-wrenching and complex form than I had ever encountered in the classroom. Pressured by environmental authorities to cull kangaroos on my property, in the name of ecological ethics, I started thinking about the very meaning of ethics, its orig…
Towards a Deeper Philosophy of Biomimicry
Biomimicry as a design concept is indeed revolutionary in its implications for human systems of production, but it is a concept in need of further philosophical elaboration and development. To this end certain philosophical principles underlying the organization of living systems generally are identified and it is argued that not only our systems of production but also our psychocultural patterns of desire need to be reorganized in accordance wit…
Planet Beehive
Honeybees have long excited the interest of philosophers and natural historians. In ancient times tracts on them were written by Aristotle, Aristomachus, Cato, Varro, Pliny, Palladius and Virgil, and in the early modern period scientific studies began with Jan Swammerdam, who combined scientific method with piety in his Bible of Nature (1737), Raumur who devoted a volume to honeybees in his Notes to Serve for a History of Insects and Franois Hube…
The Eco-Genesis of Ethics and Religion
In face of environmental crisis we urgently need global agreement on the moral significance of the biosphere. Environmental philosophers have tried to reason their way toward such moral accord by devising arguments for environmental ethics. But moral ‘truth’ does not ultimately emanate from reason; rather it is hatched inside stories, the kind of primal stories that have been the province of myth and religion. Historically, such stories have been…
Planetary Collapse Disorder: The Honeybee as Portent of the Limits of the Ethical
Beyond Modernity and Tradition: A Third Way for Development
How we understand the world (our metaphysical premise) determines, to a large degree, how we treat it. How we treat our world constitutes our basic modality. Our basic modality colors everything we do—our entire culture takes its cue from it. Three basic modalities are here distinguished. The first is the modality of pre-materialist or traditional, religion-based societies. This is a modality of importuning, the seeking of assistance from superna…
Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture
Letting the World Grow Old: An Ethos of Countermodernity1
Nature' may be understood, for environmental purposes, as whatever happens when we, or other agents under the direction of abstract thought, let things be. From this point of view it is accordingly never too late to 'return to nature'. To do so is not to restore a lost set of things or attributes, but rather to allow a certain process to begin anew. This process recommences whenever that which already exists - whether it be of nonhuman or human p…
Becoming Native: An Ethos of Countermodernity II
One of the deepest roots of the environmental crisis is the contempt for matter per se which follows from the materialism which is a presupposition of modernity. Forms of environmentalism which share this contempt by favouring the natural, the wild or the ecological over the urban, the architectural or the artefactual in fact perpetuate the deeper presuppositions and psychodynamics of modernity and thus unwittingly betray their own goals. A posit…
Community and the ecological self
Small face‐to‐face communities provide conditions for the growth of relational selves, which, unlike the individualistic selves of liberalism, are predisposed to empathy, and hence arguably to an ecocentric perspective. The relationality of community in this sense, however, needs to be distinguished from abstract forms of holism, such as nationalism and globalism. Community can nevertheless to some extent meet the challenges of transnationality b…
Conservation and Self-Realization: A Deep Ecology Perspective
Community and the ecological self
Small face‐to‐face communities provide conditions for the growth of relational selves, which, unlike the individualistic selves of liberalism, are predisposed to empathy, and hence arguably to an ecocentric perspective. The relationality of community in this sense, however, needs to be distinguished from abstract forms of holism, such as nationalism and globalism. Community can nevertheless to some extent meet the challenges of transnationality b…
Conservation and Self-Realization: A Deep Ecology Perspective
Environmental struggles in Aboriginal homelands: Indigenizing conservation in Australia
Many large remaining areas of high conservation value currently lie within Indigenous homelands. The attempts of conservationists to protect such areas from industrial development sometimes come into conflict with the contrary wish of Indigenous populations to benefit from such development. How, in such cases, can the claims of Earth communities to ecological justice be reconciled with those of Traditional Owner communities to Indigenous justice?…
Becoming Native: An Ethos of Countermodernity II
One of the deepest roots of the environmental crisis is the contempt for matter per se which follows from the materialism which is a presupposition of modernity. Forms of environmentalism which share this contempt by favouring the natural, the wild or the ecological over the urban, the architectural or the artefactual in fact perpetuate the deeper presuppositions and psychodynamics of modernity and thus unwittingly betray their own goals. A posit…
Conservation and Self-Realization: A Deep Ecology Perspective
Community and the ecological self
Small face‐to‐face communities provide conditions for the growth of relational selves, which, unlike the individualistic selves of liberalism, are predisposed to empathy, and hence arguably to an ecocentric perspective. The relationality of community in this sense, however, needs to be distinguished from abstract forms of holism, such as nationalism and globalism. Community can nevertheless to some extent meet the challenges of transnationality b…
Letting the World Grow Old: An Ethos of Countermodernity1
Nature' may be understood, for environmental purposes, as whatever happens when we, or other agents under the direction of abstract thought, let things be. From this point of view it is accordingly never too late to 'return to nature'. To do so is not to restore a lost set of things or attributes, but rather to allow a certain process to begin anew. This process recommences whenever that which already exists - whether it be of nonhuman or human p…
Becoming Native: An Ethos of Countermodernity II
One of the deepest roots of the environmental crisis is the contempt for matter per se which follows from the materialism which is a presupposition of modernity. Forms of environmentalism which share this contempt by favouring the natural, the wild or the ecological over the urban, the architectural or the artefactual in fact perpetuate the deeper presuppositions and psychodynamics of modernity and thus unwittingly betray their own goals. A posit…
Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture
Beyond Modernity and Tradition: A Third Way for Development
How we understand the world (our metaphysical premise) determines, to a large degree, how we treat it. How we treat our world constitutes our basic modality. Our basic modality colors everything we do—our entire culture takes its cue from it. Three basic modalities are here distinguished. The first is the modality of pre-materialist or traditional, religion-based societies. This is a modality of importuning, the seeking of assistance from superna…
Planetary Collapse Disorder: The Honeybee as Portent of the Limits of the Ethical
Towards a Deeper Philosophy of Biomimicry
Biomimicry as a design concept is indeed revolutionary in its implications for human systems of production, but it is a concept in need of further philosophical elaboration and development. To this end certain philosophical principles underlying the organization of living systems generally are identified and it is argued that not only our systems of production but also our psychocultural patterns of desire need to be reorganized in accordance wit…
Planet Beehive
Honeybees have long excited the interest of philosophers and natural historians. In ancient times tracts on them were written by Aristotle, Aristomachus, Cato, Varro, Pliny, Palladius and Virgil, and in the early modern period scientific studies began with Jan Swammerdam, who combined scientific method with piety in his Bible of Nature (1737), Raumur who devoted a volume to honeybees in his Notes to Serve for a History of Insects and Franois Hube…
The Eco-Genesis of Ethics and Religion
In face of environmental crisis we urgently need global agreement on the moral significance of the biosphere. Environmental philosophers have tried to reason their way toward such moral accord by devising arguments for environmental ethics. But moral ‘truth’ does not ultimately emanate from reason; rather it is hatched inside stories, the kind of primal stories that have been the province of myth and religion. Historically, such stories have been…
The Anguish of Wildlife Ethics
As an environmental philosopher I had long been aware of dilemmas between animal ethics and ecological ethics, but now, as the manager of my own biodiversity reserve, I was facing these dilemmas in a more gut-wrenching and complex form than I had ever encountered in the classroom. Pressured by environmental authorities to cull kangaroos on my property, in the name of ecological ethics, I started thinking about the very meaning of ethics, its orig…
Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene
The recent 10,000 year history of climatic stability on Earth that enabled the rise of agriculture and domestication, the growth of cities, numerous technological revolutions, and the emergence of modernity is now over. We accept that in the latest phase of this era, modernity is unmaking the stability that enabled its emergence. Over the 21st century severe and numerous weather disasters, scarcity of key resources, major changes in environments,…
The Dilemma of Dualism
This chapter explains that the roots of dualism lie not merely in historical forms of the politics of gender but, insidiously, in the very activity of theorizing itself. If this is true, then counter-dualist theories, and even emancipatory forms of politics based on them, will not help us shake off the shackles of dualism. As long as ecofeminism continues to define itself in theoretical terms, as philosophical discourse, the consciousness of ecof…
Come with Old Khayyam and Leave the Wise to Talk’
In the last thirty years, many ecophilosophies have come and gone. Visions of ecological reform and re-alignment have been rolling plentifully off the presses. Yet the ecological crisis, globally and at home, has only worsened. Why have ecophilosophical ideas failed to change social patterns of behaviour to any significant degree? Can theory change behaviour? Or is theory itself the problem? Is it theory which distances us from reality and thereb…
Elephants as refugees
Habitat loss and climate change are displacing animals at alarming rates. In response, authors in the humanities and the sciences have described animals rhetorically as ‘refugees’. Such a description implies a strong call to action. However, the term ‘refugee’ may serve as more than mere rhetoric, indicating in a more literal way the response most proper to some persecuted, traumatized and displaced animals, and prioritizing those animals. We tes…
Environmental struggles in Aboriginal homelands: Indigenizing conservation in Australia
Many large remaining areas of high conservation value currently lie within Indigenous homelands. The attempts of conservationists to protect such areas from industrial development sometimes come into conflict with the contrary wish of Indigenous populations to benefit from such development. How, in such cases, can the claims of Earth communities to ecological justice be reconciled with those of Traditional Owner communities to Indigenous justice?…
The Dao of Civilization: A Letter to China
Ecophilosophy as a Way of Life
The contemporary figure of the ecophilosopher perhaps holds the seeds of something that transcends philosophy in its current strictly academic, professionalized, indeed corporatized mode. This is a "something" that could, on the one hand, tie philosophy back to its own ancient, life-giving, but now lost, root in the Graeco-Roman world, and on the other hand, open it up to people searching outside the academy for a shared and reflective way of lif…
Philosophy (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Environmental ethics (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (7 works) · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)