Oceanic and Tethysian being-in-the-world

An essay on the human self and world understanding in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This essay proposes that we, as human beings, especially in the West and in the Holocene epoch, have developed a life-negating understanding of ourselves and the world. This is uncovered in the Anthropocene, through what is called ‘the Anthropocene crack’: a painful eco-wound revealing how we forgot that we are living beings in a living water-world, coexisting with other living water-beings. Yet the Anthropocene crack is also a gateway to a new Anthropocene world understanding that acknowledges our oceanic and tethysian being-in-the world, which is an ecological understanding of life, living beings and the world in which water is seen as the arche (ἀρχή) of everything in this world.