The Paralysis of Intergenerational Justice: decolonising entangled futures

The lives of Indigenous Peoples, their compatriots, future generations, nonhuman, and physical environments are inextricably entangled. Intergenerational environmental justice (IEJ) examines aspects of that entanglement. Specifically, it focuses on obligations and duties to provide future generations with environments in which to flourish. I argue there are three fundamental, interrelated weaknesses in existing theories of IEJ. First, theories take insufficient regard of power relations in settler states. Not only are political and judicial systems framed within Western traditions, but so too are justice theories. Theorists, therefore, appear to endorse and perpetuate the assimilationist project. Second, these theories do not account for entanglements of human cultures, human-nonhuman, past, present and future generations in an adequately inclusive manner. These theoretical oversights exclude aspects of Indigenous people’s philosophies and extant lifeways within their frameworks. The theories are unable to accommodate the multiple temporal, spatial and interspecies entanglements that define aspects of Indigenous identity and being. Third, bound by specific ontological parameters, IEJ becomes paralysed in a web of seemingly intractable problems for human and nonhuman within the settler states. To make these arguments, I draw on IEJ theories, critical and decolonial scholarship, and Aotearoa Māori and Australian Aboriginal philosophic perspectives. Case study examples demonstrate that in at least two settler states existing theories of IEJ become unworkable at the intersection with Indigenous communities drawing from different philosophical foundations. Māori and Aboriginal philosophic approaches to IEJ highlight two things. First, Western IEJ limits the agency of Indigenous communities to fulfil obligations and duties to past and future generations—human and nonhuman—and the environment. And second, by decolonising theory it is feasible to ensure Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the settler states are embraced by theory, addressing the iniquity of assimilationist practice. Decolonised IEJ embraces multiple entanglements—Indigenous-settler, human-nonhuman, past-present-future—freeing it from a paralyses caused by Western ontological framings

Inquiry, critique, and the intelligible : an interpretation of Horkheimer’s Liturgical Turn

Max Horkheimer’s mature works on theology and Schopenhauerian metaphysics have been portrayed by subsequent critical theorists as an illicit regression from his earlier social theory in a two-fold sense. First, his concern to reflect on empirical experience is replaced with speculation regarding intelligible concepts, i.e. concepts that do not arise from observation on the basis of sense-intuition but are rather products of “pure” reason (God) or the imagination (Schopenhauer’s will). Second, his advocacy of the Enlightenment as an emancipatory political project is replaced by its skeptical critique. I argue that this consensus radically misunderstands the concerns animating the late Horkheimer insofar as his reflections on intelligible concepts are both intimately related to a continuing concern with empirical inquiry, as well as an outworking of his commitment to the realization of the Enlightenment. The argument is presented in three related movements. In the first, I interpret Horkheimer’s oeuvre in terms of his pervasive interest in developing a materialist logic. I begin by outlining his early understanding of thought as a form of inquiry for embodied social subjects (chapter 1), before noting how, in his mature theorizing, this account serves as a basis for a presentation of the relationship between various kinds of inquiry and the practice of social critique (chapter 2). In the second, I contend that Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason is best understood as congruent with this materialist logic, not as a speculative departure from an earlier concern with empirical inquiry. I begin by examining Horkheimer’s empirical analysis of how historical changes in the basic institutions defining political economy in modern life affect the reasoning habits of subjects (chapter 3). I then turn to his diagnosis of the way such changes affect the selfunderstanding of modern subjects, leading to a pervasive form of alienation (chapter 4). In the final movement, I present Horkheimer’s turn to theological concepts of the intelligible as a therapeutic response to this alienation. First, I examine his understanding of the content of theological concepts as well as how such concepts may be preserved in a form appropriate to modern life (chapter 5), and conclude by illustrating his own attempt at such a retrieval in his late reflections on the Jewish liturgy (chapter 6). In the conclusion, I note that this interpretation offers a constructive challenge to philosophers concerned with the tradition of critical theory. On the one hand, Horkheimer articulates what would be required for the fulfillment of the Enlightenment project in terms critical theorists will recognize as their own, by offering an account of the social practices that are necessary for the self-determination of the subject. Yet his presentation contests a fundamental axiom of such theorists regarding the role intelligible concepts ought to play in seeking this goal. Horkheimer defends an account of the significance of the liturgy for practices of reasoning that is quiet foreign to such theorists. Instead of setting liturgical reasoning over against a militantly “secular” Enlightenment, he demonstrates that such reasoning is integral to its fulfillment