A Neural Turn? On the Ontology of the Geographical Subject

Benedikt Korf
Additional contact information
Benedikt Korf: Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH 8057 Zurich, Switzerland

Environment and Planning A, 2008, vol. 40, issue 3, 715-732

Abstract: The modernist conception of the autonomous ‘subject’ as centred, sovereign, and coherently rational, acting intentionally, knowledgeably, and volitionally, has been challenged from a variety of sources, including poststructuralism, feminism, and posthumanism. A different kind of attack on the modernist subject has recently been staged by neurobiologists who have started to decentre the subject from within —to ‘naturalise’ (and materialise) the subject. This biological naturalism—the new ‘life sciences’—claims to challenge our conceptions of self, the ethical subject, and what we conceive of as ‘life’. But what conceptions we have of the configurations of the self is fundamental to our understandings and conceptions of ethics. This paper traces a debate between German neurobiologists and (post)humanist philosophers on the ontology of such things as ‘free will’, ‘ethical agency’, and the ‘self’ as an example of how the dispute between naturalists and nonnaturalist or postnaturalists is instrumental in sharpening our understanding of the self and of ethical agency. The paper argues that naturalism is bound to fail due to its inability to grasp the intersubjectivist nature of ethical agency, a theme which links up with recent geographical writing on ethics. I suggest, building on a recent contribution of Huib Ernste in this journal, that we should consider Helmuth Plessner's concept of eccentric positionality and ontology of the possible as a postmetaphysical kind of ethical humanism.

Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a3938 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:40:y:2008:i:3:p:715-732

DOI: 10.1068/a3938

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().