A Gaelic Ethology or Viewing Infinity with Spinoza

Bibliographic Data

ID12901979
AuthorsHeather Lynch (0000-0002-5898-5397, Glasgow Caledonian University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-18
Publication date2026-03-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthics and Social Welfare (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1749-6535 • E-ISSN: 1749-6543
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17496535.2026.2623181
OpenAlexW7138931700
LanguageEN
References cited33

In the context of environmental crisis and ascendant advanced technologies, the question of how to live in more-than-human worlds is imperative. To develop a practical theorisation of what this might mean, this article brings Spinoza’s Ethics into conversation with the traditional ways of living practised by Scotland’s Gaelic peoples. Together, they offer the means of contemplating a relational, more-than-human ethics. This has relevance to social work scholarship, critical of abstract codes that prioritise human objectives. Spinoza’s ethics and Gaelic ways of living originated pre-Enlightenment, before Descartes placed mind above body and before Kant’s transcendent codes. Both offer a view within the messy interdependence of lives that cannot be extracted from more-than-human interdependence with land, sea, plants, weather and creatures. The resistance of Gaelic modes of living that is conveyed as much through material environment as culture indicates the sustainability of their relational approach to living. This relational approach is not a God's eye view from above but is a view of infinity found only in the immersive tangle of material relations. This article does not offer a blueprint or model for social work but is a provocation to rethink the social

Blueprint · Context (archaeology · Conversation · Deontic logic · Ethology · Infinity · Relevance (law · Historical Philosophy and Science · Scottish History and National Identity · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought