1) No easy coherence between already-existing philosophies and the ecological question. Marxism and ecology. Ontology and ecology. Psychoanalysis and ecology. Vitalism and ecology. Epistemology and ecology. Theology and ecology. The general trend is to squeeze the latter into the former, show how it’s always been so, etc.
2) Liberationist philosophy (whether Christian theology, Marxism, or neoliberalism) has tended to emphasize what have been called “acts of commission,” as opposed to “acts of omission”: that is, oppression, warfare, sin. The spectre of ecological crisis is one in which, regardless of human goodness or evil, regardless of whether greed is good or bad, things have been pushed too far, and they will snap.
3) Relativism is not an ontology (e.g., “It’s turtles all the way down”). Quantum physics is not social theory.
4) There is stupidity. There are wrong answers. Are there right answers? There are less-wrong answers.
5) Knowledge production is necessary for finding solutions. Knowledge production has (very large) material needs. These two facts will always be in conflict.
6) Scarcity needs to be thought, but we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is dangerous ground, though, and rationalization/ideology abounds.
7) There is something important expressed in Kant’s Third Formulation of the Categorical Imperative: “Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.” Don’t reify it, though.
8 No matter how bad a problem gets, one can always make things worse. This expression, however, can be formalized, and all iterations are true (No matter how much P, there can always be Q -> not-P, not-Q; P, not-Q; not-P, Q).
9) A theory of hegemony takes precedence over a theory of the State.
10) There are three sins: fraud, cynicism and hypocrisy. Fraud is by far the worst.
11) The weight of sheer numbers.
