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2025 Earth Day – Giorgio Caproni’s verses emphasize the interconnectedness of nature and humanity, urging against the destruction of ecosystems for profit. He laments that love ceases where nature dies, and reflects on the potential beauty of Earth in humanity’s absence, highlighting the dire consequences of environmental degradation.
Understanding Gaia: War, Peace, and the Anthropocene – The Anthropocene era reveals the intertwined relationship between humanity and Gaia, emphasizing our dual role as both insignificant in cosmic scale yet possessing immense geological power. This era challenges traditional views of nature, framing it as a dynamic participant rather than a passive backdrop. Latour advocates for a new politics of coexistence, urging humans to navigate complex relationships with Gaia and acknowledge our moral responsibilities in this interconnected ecological framework.
Recontextualizing Controversial Monuments: Lessons from Bolzano, historical and natural monuments – The discussion of “cancel culture” and historical monuments, including the General Lee statue and the Monument to Victory in Bolzano, highlights the ongoing debate over the removal or reuse of controversial symbols. Alessandro Manzoni’s reflections and romantic irony illustrate how these acts are not new but part of a long history of social discourse, urging a nuanced understanding of the past rather than simple erasure. In the post’s Conclusion, the perspective of geological time represented by the Bletterbach natural monument is introduced, which relativizes the historical values considered absolute.
Peace, Process Philosophy, and Youth’s Tragedy – Alfred North Whitehead’s “process philosophy” inspires a dynamic idea of peace that is not considered an essence or a goal to achieve. It does not stand in opposition to war. Instead, it appears to be a method, a process, or an event of continuous becoming by which humans learn to comprehend the tragic dimension of the universe’s life and their position in it.
2024 World Poetry Day – Garden among flames by Ibn ʿArabī Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) was an Andalusi Arab scholar, contemplative mystic, Sufi poet, and philosopher who was very influential within Islamic culture and religion. Ibn ʿArabī is considered a saint by some scholars and Muslim communities. In his poetry, there are traces of the Sufi metaphysical concept of “Wahdat ul-Wujud” […]
How can we talk about peace? Heraclitus, the twentieth century as war, and us – Heraclitus and current ideas of war and peace In a recent post on this blog, I reflected on the similarities between the international situation created by the current war in Ukraine and the one that gave rise to the First World War at the beginning of the last century. After one year, the more recent […]