Artist-Philosopher in the Age of Addiction

<p>George Smith argues that modern humanity suffers from a late-stage pre-fatal addiction to scientific-technological thinking. Like most pre-fatal addictions this one will most likely result in one of three ways: misery extinction or human transformation. The question remains wherein lies the third way?</p><p>According to Smith mankind's chronic and as yet undiagnosed sickness originates in early Western metaphysics and has long been thoroughly globalized. It explains unstoppable extractionism and its relentlessly increasing by-product carbon dioxide. It also explains today's ever-increasing rate of species extinction and the increasingly likely collapse of the biosphere. Citing climate change tolerance and denial as symptomatic of pre-fatal addiction Smith turns his analysis to Heidegger's question concerning technology and shows that even Heidegger had become hooked on scientific-technological thinking. Surrendering to his disease Heidegger steps back into meditative thought. This in turn opens Heidegger to an East-West mode of scientific-poetic consciousness the thinking of artist-philosophers such as Laozi Hölderlin and Rachel Carson. For Heidegger this way of thinking lays the path to mankind's transformative emancipation from an otherwise inescapable catastrophe.</p><p>The book will be of interest to scholars of the arts and culture histories of consciousness and climate studies.</p><p>Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license</p>