Peter speaks to the philosopher Ted Toadvine about a wide range of environmental themes and issues. Toadvine specialises in environmental ethics and contemporary European philosophy. His new book titled The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology explores the ethical and ecological implications of deep time from a phenomenological perspective and is available now via University of Minnesota Press.

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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:44) Episode begins
(09:57) Why Toadvine wrote The Memory of the World
(16:56) Toadvine’s earliest experiences of deep time
(23:27) Reconciling humanity and the natural environment
(40:57) Technology and nature
(46:00) The problem with the Anthropocene
(58:10) The problem with biodiversity
(01:05:52) The relationship between nature and language
(01:10:12) What is eco-phenomenology?
(01:15:10) Nature as the horizon of all things
(01:20:07) “Nature loves to hide”
(01:26:08) Husserl’s description of the natural world as a “correlate of consciousness”
(01:31:48) “The sun did not exist before human beings”
(01:42:45) The ethical problems of global sustainability
(01:52:23) The relationship between deep time and embodiment
(02:03:43) The animals that haunt our humanity from within
(02:20:38) Derrida at the end of the world
(02:29:06) The cultural obsession with doomsday
(02:36:39) The phenomenological perspective of the end of the world
(02:47:20) A phenomenology of the elements
(02:52:04) Art and the elements