Lisa A Amenya

Indeed, this ambition could easily lend support to ideas about opportunities to directly derive political principles from scientific statements about the world directly. Moreover,And it is in the attempts to avoid such ideas and safeguard the legitimacy of the practice of political theory that sometimes science is presented as being able to negatively ground normative propositions and principles negatively., Oand other times political theory alone has the prerogative to do this kind of work. The ambiguous stance towards science and ethico-political issues, I maintain furthermore, emerges because neither of these two positions isare consistent with the idea of green democracy advanced by ecologist political theory and grounded in the principle of natural constitutive interconnectedness, with a belonging of the political world to the natural, or with a relation of identity between humans and nature. If it is accepted that science is actually enoughenough for to justifying political order, there is no need for political theory at all. This would arguably disqualify ecologist political thought altogether as a legitimate and meaningful practice.14 Thus, if ecologism is to asserts itself as a valid intellectual and political endeavoour, this position cannot be fully endorsed. On the other hand, if it is maintained that it is not possible to derive political principles from a natural scientific understanding of nature, it is also implied that there is a rupture in the constitutive interconnectedness of the political and the natural since this position presupposes that political principles and their intelligibility are separated from the natural world. Thus, ecologism seems to presupposes that political practice—ecologism being itself a political project—is separate from nature. In factfact, the very need to engage in political theorizsing and for an ecologist intervention in political theory suggests a separation between politics and nature.15 Thus, these two critical remarks indicate either that politics does not fully belong to the natural world, or that nature is, in fact, not an interrelated all-encompassing structure. And since the latter alternative disqualifies ecologism altogether, the former seems to be the lesser evil to accept. Hence, it seems reasonable to insert, beneath ecologism’s statements regarding the political world being part of nature, it seems reasonable to insert the presupposition that this is not the case. On the other hand, supposeIf ecologism is not to entirelydoes not disqualify itself as a legitimatelegitimate endeavor endeavour and meaningful discursive practice. In that case, it seems forced to commit to an understanding of politics as not fully belonging to the natural world., Ithat it is separate, from it and that political being differs from a natural being. For, since political theorizsing is itself political according to ecologism and part of the political practice it is concerned with, ecologism itself appears to be separate from ecological nature. Engendered by the refusal to directly derive normative and political principles from natural science directly, ecologist political thought seems required to presuppose that ecologism itself is separate from the nature of which it claims to be a part. Furthermore, the claim that questions regarding humankind’s place in the world are logically prior to questions about political order is itself evidently a political statement seeing that it is part of political discourse, which, again, belongs to the political world it theorizses. Therefore, the claim itself belongs to the kind of questions it designates as logically secondary. And given that the political theory this claim helps to ground is not subjected to the constitutive interconnectedness of nature, after all, it seems like the claim cannot be validated or validate itself within the discourse of which it is part. Thus, In order forfor the claim and the associated ambition to align political theory to an ecological understanding of nature to be meaningful, there must first be a political practice not fully belonging to nature articulating that claim and that understanding of nature. And considering how fundamental these issues are for the discourse of ecologist political theory, pretty much every concept in that discourse seems to rely on such a political practice. It turns out, so to say, that the principle of natural interconnectedness, as a concept in political theory, does not itself belong to the interconnectedness of the world it describes; ecologism itself is separate from the interrelated natural whole to which it claims to belong. So basically, ecologism seems unable to accept deriving normative and political principles directly from nature as made intelligible by the natural sciences without calling into question its own legitimate existence. In a world where such derivation would be possible, there would be no need for political theory. Hence, ecologism seems forced to accept as a presupposition that politics is somehow separate from the natural world., Tthat there is a qualitative difference between the political and the natural marked as a rupture of interconnectedness. It presupposes that politics and nature are not the same in the sense that they belong to the same whole. And by that, they are also different from each other. Thus, they do not share a basic identity;, they do not form a unity of identity. But the difference between the two is not a simple duality; the political world and the natural world are not separated by a wall making them independent of each other. PFor politics is not fully dislocated from nature, and there is still influence between the two. Even if political order does not belong to nature, it is still directed towards it; political order exists only insofar as it renders the world meaningful. For instance, it can exist by determining the world to beas a great interconnected whole in which relations are ontologically prior to the things they relate. Or, to take another example, it can exist by determining humans to be separated from nature. In other words, since political order—including ecologist political theory—is first and foremost a practice of determining meaning, it is always directed towards that which it makes meaningful.; Ppolitics makes the world meaningful, and in order forfor it to do so, it requires a world; the determination of meaning requires that there is something to determine. And this something is at the most abstract level, only something different from determination;, iit is purely that which becomes determined. Thus, politics presupposes something different from itself, something other,; something that exists outside the practice of determining meaning. And the presupposed outside world cannot have any other qualities than being outside of political order. For to the extent that politics is the practice of determining meaning in general, that which it provides with meaning can have no positive content prior to its doings. Should it have positive content on its own, politics would be nothing;, it would amount to nothing. Thus, the nature presupposed by politics cannot be the nature described by ecology, or any other positively defined nature; the natural world presupposed by political order is an empty world, a void, a world bereft of qualities, ecological or otherwise. Nature before politics simply is. But despite lacking positive content, it is still something. It is a world of pure difference, a world the only defining mark of which is being different from the determination of meaning. And given that political practice is subjective, that which is different from it is evidently non-subjective. Or, more simply put, the nature presupposed by politics is a purely objective world, a world of thingliness but without determinate things, a material world without form. It is also Iin this sense, it is also that it is a natural world; it is natural by virtue of being objective. And lastly, to the extent that subjective practice is at least associated with humans—which seems to be a fairly reasonable assumption to make even regarding ecologism since ecologist political theory is at least practicsed by human beings—a human being is associated with the inside of political order. Thus, when political order is said to be different and separate from nature, it is also said that humans are also said to be different and separate from nature. Thus, ecologism presupposes that the political world of humans does not belong to nature. But since the political world directs itself towards the world beyond it, their relation is not one of complete separation and independence, of disunity. Instead, there is still a unity between humans and nature, but it is a unity of difference in which one related party does not belong to the other; humans and nature are related by virtue of their difference; one always comes with the other, but they do not share a fundamental identity.