The Ontological Consequences of Copernicus

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary space exploration, in producing visual representations of the planetary Earth for terrestrial consumption, has engendered a shift in the way the Earth - as terra firma - is both experienced and conceived. The article goes on to suggest that this shift is a key, but still largely tacit presupposition, underlying contemporary discourses on globalization and cultural cosmopolitanization. However, a close reading of some of the texts that make up the canon of 20th-century European philosophy shows that this idea of a ‘deterritorialized’ planetary Earth challenges some basic presuppositions of that canon: especially its use of the pre-reflective experience of terra firma as a tropic site of intological and normative grounds. This article examines the way in which contemporary Western European philosophy - and intellectual culture generally - has responded to this challenge: and offers Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the Earth as a ‘surface without territory’ as the most intellectually and ethically viable conception of the Earth in the age of ‘planetary deterritorialization’.

Cosmological sources of critical cosmopolitanism

“…These explorations have at times resulted in the construction of a terrestrial ontology of earthliness that involves a territorial conception of politics. 60 The effects of the implicit nihilism of Copernicus and Darwin have not been confined to those who have read and reflected upon Nietzsche. Rather, Nietzsche has provided a genuine insight into the cultural undercurrents of modernity.…”