Ecological humanities, philosophy and the “Third Culture”: notes for addressing ecological justice in a law school today

Gonzalo Gallardo Blanco, UAM

2024

The seriousness of the ecological crisis and the inadequacy with which it is being addressed in all spheres of our political and social reality (including the academic sphere), is today a fact that is increasingly recognised by more and more sectors. Thus, one point on which some colleagues have been working for some time now to try to respond to this reality is the attempt to offer a proposal for a framework within the humanities. With the aim of overcoming the limitations of most of the hitherto dominant humanities approaches to the ecological question.

In this way, in recent years certain research groups have advanced from the framework of the “environmental humanities” to that of the “ecological humanities”, which are proposed as an emerging field of interdisciplinary reflection and knowledge that, in the face of the ecological crisis, seeks to provide a complex diagnosis that connects natural, economic, cultural and moral processes. 

In my opinion, this interconnection between structures, processes and representations provides a very stimulating and fruitful framework, which gives a privileged space to the humanities and social sciences (the research fields on which I focus) to understand the different vectors of this crisis of civilisation and the necessary reflection on its alternatives. For, in a broad sense, as a framework, the ecological humanities also include the social sciences and are closely related to the natural sciences. For their field of study is above all concerned with human beings, our motivations, actions and their consequences: it is a question of understanding not only this set of social behaviours, but also human interpretations and representations of the world and of ourselves. 

Along these lines, the interest of the ecological humanities lies in humans (both individually and collectively) and in our motivations and actions: from our history, culture, religion and economy to our legal, artistic, musical, philosophical or literary framework. Fields of knowledge which cannot be properly addressed with regard to the ecological question without a knowledge based on the natural sciences as a whole, which allow us to understand the conditions of the Earth (biological, geological, physical) that ultimately determine our social possibilities. 

In my opinion, in order to operate correctly, these ecological humanities must be based on a dialectical approach, understanding this, following the philosopher Manuel Sacristán, as a perspective or intellectual attitude that seeks the production and clarification of concrete totalities based on scientific analysis, generating from the data and evidence that this provides us with “the concrete-whole” to be analysed. An analysis that does not admit as genetic data other than those of scientific explanation (generally provided by what we know as “positive sciences”, social and natural) in the degree of development in which it is at that moment, introducing them later in an approach tending to the recovery from them of the concretion of complex and superior formations. In short, holistic, systemic and multidisciplinary approach, which understands our material reality as relational, interactive and evolutionary.

Having said this, and without being able to go into as much depth as I would like, it is also worth clarifying the conception of philosophy that we are therefore dealing with within this whole framework. Here, again, we rely on Sacristán’s contribution, complemented by that of another philosopher, Francisco Fernández Buey.

For both of them, the key lies in conceiving philosophical occupation not as the construction of a false super-knowledge of things, but as a critical activity exercised on existing real knowledge: scientific and pre-scientific knowledge of everyday experience. This means that philosophical study cannot be detached from the objects of its reflection, which are scientific and pre-scientific or everyday consciousness. Rather, philosophical studies must be the culmination of the study of ‘real sciences’.

This is because philosophy is not a positive science. Thus, while there is indeed general and elementary knowledge of physics, biology or psychology to be transmitted, there is no substantive philosophical knowledge. There is no substantive philosophical knowledge superior to positive knowledge: philosophical systems are most often presented as pseudo-theories that cannot be scientifically contrasted (unprovable and irrefutable), built up through the improper use of formal inference schemes.

Philosophy (or rather ‘philosophising’) should therefore be reconceptualised as the reflection on the foundations, methods and perspectives of theoretical, pre-theoretical and practical knowledge. A meta-philosophy valuable for the understanding of the past, still present, of higher culture. And a philosophising that must be present in the training and research development of each specialist in his or her field of knowledge, capable of introducing the philosophical vocation, as a reflective effort of the research of methodological and genetic foundations and of the gnoseological and social perspectives of his or her positive knowledge, into it. 

In our approach, therefore, philosophy and the humanities do not claim to be normative and to be responsible for providing a supra-theoretical framework, in the style of a meta-science, which is then given to other fields to apply. Rather, it is given as an exercise of thought which, starting from whatever thematic field it may be, tries to overcome the split in the culture and consciousness of the scientist. 

And with all this we would therefore arrive at the concept of “Third Culture”, based on the reflection carried out on it by Fernández Buey. To be brief on this point, the central thesis of the concept of “Third Culture” that this philosopher handles is the attempt to overcome the split between scientific culture and humanistic culture, as the “two great cultures” or fields of knowledge already clearly delimited from the 19th century onwards, through a synthesis in a third culture that overcomes them and does not admit the subjection of one to the other.

In this sense, his notion of “Third Culture” attempts to respond to the difficulty of “translating without betraying” some scientific notions or theories into an appropriate philosophical, natural, non-technical language. Fernández Buey’s key lies, therefore, in knowing how to provide correct forms of theoretical mediation between science and the consciousness of the popular classes, among which metaphors and didactic formulas stand out, which, in addition to provoking research and being taught in the language of specialists, can make their advances reach the popular classes.

And here I believe that the whole proposed framework can be key to addressing the question of ecological justice or the issue of the rights of nature in a type of faculty such as law, as they are currently configured. 

For only with fundamental research in this field of knowledge by its researchers, together with a correct understanding of the ecological crisis in its various and most important dimensions (for which knowledge of the natural sciences is undoubtedly crucial), can a question such as that of ecological justice be properly addressed by this field of reflection. This is in addition to the fact that it can then be made comprehensible to law students, who will surely start from a narrower knowledge base of natural sciences than that of other faculties, and for whom the “translating without betraying” of the “Third Culture” may be even more key to gradually introduce them to this issue.

Further readings and resources:

Albelda, J., Arribas, F. y Madorrán, C. (Coord.) (2023). Humanidades ecológicas: hacia un humanismo biosférico, Tirant Humanidades. 

Fernández Buey, F. (2013). Para la Tercera Cultura, El Viejo Topo.

Sacristán, M. (2021). Ecología y ciencia social, Ed. Irrecuperables.