German biologist and ecophilosopher Andreas Weber is today coming up with a radically new understanding of life, one that reconnects our human species with the more than human world of the biosphere. His concept of “poetic ecology” or “biopoetics” is based on the idea that the basis of life is feeling and emotion, that subjectivity and imagination are necessary prerequisites for biological functioning itself. To be alive, to participate…
Category: Texts
Barbora Kinkalová: Back to Earth or current news from the Happiness Farm
Barbora Kinkalová (born in Prague) studied film production at FAMU. She worked as a producer and executive producer on feature films, fiction films and documentaries (Czech Lion for Best Film of 2008 – The Karamazovs); she headed the production department at the National Film Archive. In 2018, she and her friends created the film Happy Farmers about a farm near the Buddhist monastery of Plum Village in France. This experience gave her…
Luděk Čertík: Three poems
Luděk Čertík (born 1989 in České Budějovice) studied film history and environmental studies; he works as a program director at the Prague Short Film Festival. He occasionally writes and lectures about film, mainly the work of American-born Terrence Malick, but also about artistic nature films, and also translates and writes poetry. He has published in the magazines Film a Doba, Sedmá generace, Universum. He is a member of…
Jiří Zemánek: On the art of pilgrimage or knowing how to get lost and On walking
On the art of pilgrimage or knowing how to get lost Pilgrimage means embracing the land, nature and letting it embrace you – with all your senses! As a pilgrim, I simply cannot avoid it, escape from it into another reality, or intellectually deceive it in any way. On the contrary, it is necessary to be extremely attentive and at the same time humble, because the reality of the land that surrounds and carries me…
Martin Nawrath: Seen in Currants and Pets of the Darlings
Martin Nawrath (born 1968) is a facilitator, therapist, lecturer, consultant, essayist and poet. Life has led him ever deeper into the topics he has been drawn to since childhood. How to perceive, experience and protect the beauty of the world. How to seek a deeper meaning of democracy as a path to nature, naturalness and community. How to listen to the signs of the times with the ears of a fool and an emperor. Studying biochemistry, working in the field of conservation…
Andreas Weber: Revival or What is life and what role do we play in it?
“In order to protect the biosphere, we must focus our activities on the image of living reality.” Andreas WEBER Andreas WEBER (1967) is an outstanding German biologist, philosopher, biosemiotician and publicist. He studied marine biology and cultural studies and collaborated with the prominent theoretical biologist Vrancesco Varela in Paris. As an independent scientist, he explores a new understanding of life as meaning, or “biopoetics,” within the framework of science and art; he looks…
David Abram: On the Ecology of Language
An excerpt from Chapter 4 (The Body of Language) of the book by American ecophilosopher David Abram The Magic of the Senses – Perception and Language in a More Than Human World (DharmaGaia, Prague 2013, pp. 103-107); translated by Michalea Melechovská and Jiří Zemánek. In our own time, it is precisely language, understood as an exclusively human characteristic, that is most often used as evidence of the excellence of the human race in…
David Abram: The Ecology of Magic or on the Intelligence of Spiders
Excerpt from David Abram's book The Spell of the Sensuous / Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (DharmaGaia 2009, pp. 32-38; original: The Spell of the Sensuous. Pantheon Books, New York 1996); Czech translation by Michaela Melechovská and Jiří Zemánek. A few months after my arrival in Bali, I left the village where I was staying to visit one of the island's pre-Hindu sites.…
Jiří Zemánek: We need a real "rebellion for life"
Speech at the Extinction Rebellion event in Prague on October 12: “We are not here to run the world, we are here to become an integral part of the greater earthly community.” Thomas Berry I join the pro-life rebellion. The American philosopher Christopher Bache characterized our current situation in the following words: “There seems to be a certain maturation taking place today; a kind of massive subterranean awakening. … It’s getting hot,…
Richard Tarnas: Epistemology of the Heart
“Planetary democracy does not yet exist, but our global civilization is already preparing a place for it: it is the real Earth we inhabit, connected to the sky above us. Only in this arrangement can the reciprocity and community of the human race be newly created, with respect and gratitude for that which transcends each of us and all of us together. The authority of a world of democratic order cannot simply be built…