Ted Toadvine

Professional Bio

Over the last three decades, my research has focused on the intersection of two themes. First, I have investigated foundational problems in the philosophy of nature, including ethics, aesthetics, ontology, and epistemology. I have been particularly interested in the philosophical assumptions that guide our understanding of contemporary environmental challenges, including the cultural and historical framing of environmental problems and their solutions. Second, I have explored the contribution of the philosophical methods of phenomenology and deconstruction to clarifying the human relationship to nature, including our embodiment, our relationship with non-human animals, and the experiential foundations of scientific knowledge. My research is informed by the history of philosophy and engages the emerging interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities.

In 2003, I introduced “ecophenomenology” as an approach to environmental theory grounded on the methods of phenomenology, and this is now recognized as an established field of research across the environmental humanities with proponents in literary ecocriticism, the arts, architecture, and critical animal studies, as well as philosophy.

My first monograph, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (2009), developed the theoretical basis for ecophenomenology through a study of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose insights continue to inform my thinking. Over the last decade, I have published journal articles and book chapters that extend the methods of ecophenomenology and develop original investigations in the philosophy of nature, including studies of the human-animal relation, biodiversity, natural temporality, and environmental apocalypticism. These studies are linked by their concern with the relationship between the human experience of time and deep time at geological and evolutionary scales, which scholars have identified as a central challenge of the so-called Anthropocene.

The problem of bridging vastly incongruous scales of time is made thematic in my latest monograph, The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology (2024), where I argue for a new philosophy of time that takes seriously our entanglement in temporal events spanning cosmic, geological, evolutionary, and historical registers. I contend that our obsession with the world’s precarity relies on a flawed understanding of time that neglects our responsibilities for the past and present in favor of managing the future. This misleads sustainability efforts and diminishes our encounters with the world and with human and nonhuman others.

Education

• BA, Salisbury University
• PhD, The University of Memphis

Areas of Specialization

• Contemporary European philosophy, especially phenomenology and deconstruction
• Philosophy of Nature and Environment, including environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, and the history of the philosophy of nature
• Environmental humanities and interdisciplinary environmental studies

Recent Courses

• Big Questions (PHIL 001)
• Nature and Environment (PHIL 013)
• World, Earth, and Planet (PHIL 402)
• Responsible Conduct of Research in Life and Health Sciences (RISE 500L)
• Critical Ecophenomenology (PHIL 557)
• Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (PHIL 580)

Administrative and Editorial Positions

Nancy Tuana Director, Rock Ethics Institute, https://rockethics.psu.edu/

Editor, Contributions to Phenomenology Series, Springer International Publishing, https://www.springer.com/series/5811

Books

The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2024.

Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Edited with Nicolas de Warren. Online edition. Springer International Publishing, 2020. https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-030-47253-5

Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2009.

The Merleau-Ponty Reader. Edited with Leonard Lawlor. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007.

Nature's Edge: Boundary Explorations in Ecological Theory and Practice. Edited with Charles Brown. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007.

Merleau-Ponty: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Edited. Four volumes. London: Routledge, 2006.

Renaud Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Translated with Leonard Lawlor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. Edited with Charles Brown. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003.

Edited Special Journal Issues 

Critical Phenomenology after Merleau-Ponty. Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty's Thought 23 (2021).

Thinking the Outside: Politics, Aesthetics, Ontology. Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty's Thought 19 (2018).

Existence, Diacritics, Animality. Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty's Thought 15 (2013).

Continental Philosophy: What and Where Will It Be? Fiftieth Anniversary Special Issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50, no. 2 (2012).

Recent Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/
• Anthropocene Time and the Memory of the World. Chiasmi International 24 (2022): 171-190.
• Climate Collapse, Judgment Day, and the Temporal Sublime. Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology 4 (2021): 127-143.
• Ecophenomenology after the End of Nature. In Transforming Politics with Merleau-Ponty: Thinking Beyond the State, edited by Jerome Melançon, 127-144. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.
• Limits of the Flesh: The Role of Reflection in David Abram's Ecophenomenology. In Literature and the Environment: Critical and Primary Sources, edited by Stephanie LeMenager and Teresa Shewry. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. Reprinted from Environmental Ethics.
• Climate Apocalypticism and the Temporal Sublime. In Environmental Ethics: Cross-Cultural Explorations, edited by Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach and Madalina Diaconu, 115-131. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2020.
• In 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, edited by Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy, and Gayle Salamon, 149-154. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019.
• Arzun Önceligi ve Ekolojik Sonuçlari. Cogito (Istanbul) 93 (2019): 113-127.
• The End of All Things: Geomateriality and Deep Time. Investigaciones Fenomenológicas, Monográfico 7 (2018): 367-390.
• Thinking After the World: Deconstruction and Last Things. In Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Ethics, edited by Matthias Fritsch, Philippe Lynes, and David Wood, 21-47. Bronx: Fordham University Press, 2018.
• Our Monstrous Futures: Global Sustainability and Eco-Eschatology. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 21, no. 1 (2017): 219-230.
• Biodiversità e diacritica della vita. Animal Studies: Rivista italiana di antispecismo 6, no. 19 (2017): 37-54.
• Musica Universalis ve Doganin Hafizasi. Cogito (Istanbul) 88 (2017): 193-214.
• Naturalism, Estrangement, and Resistance: On the Lived Senses of Nature. In Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspectives and Environmental Reorientations, edited by Gerard Kuperus and Marjolein Oele, 181-198. Berlin: Springer, 2017.
• Phenomenology and Environmental Ethics. In Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics, edited by Stephen Gardiner and Allen Thompson, 174-185. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Nicolae Morar, Ted Toadvine, and Brendan Bohannan. Biodiversity at Twenty-Five: Revolution or Red Herring? Ethics, Policy & Environment 18, no. 1 (2015): 16-29.
• Biodiversity and the Diacritics of Life. In Carnal Hermeneutics, edited by Brian Treanor and Richard Kearney, 235-248. Bronx: Fordham University Press, 2015.
• The Time of Animal Voices. Environmental Philosophy 11, no. 1 (2014): 109-124.
• The Elemental Past. Research in Phenomenology 44, no 2 (2014): 262-279.
• Tempo naturale e natura immemoriale. Translated by Roberto Brigati. Discipline Filosofiche 24, no. 2 (2014): 9-22.
• Apocalyptic Imagination and the Silence of the Elements. In Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch and Fernando Castrillón, 211-221. Berlin: Springer, 2014.
• Nature’s Wandering Hands: Painting at the End of the World. Klesis: Revue Philosophique 25 (2013): 109-123.
• Le temps des voix animales. Chiasmi International 15 (2013): 269-282.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Lifeworldly Naturalism. In Husserl's Ideen, edited by Lester Embree and Tom Nenon, 365-380. Berlin: Springer, 2013.