a natural gathering of all being

So I've been trying to figure out what I am going to write my Hospitality paper about, and I had this thought today while walking around campus. Life, or more specifically, being, is like a magnet: it simultaneously, attracts, groups, repels, and polarizes. Being wants to be and being wants to be-with. I know that Nancy posited that all being is actually a being-with, but just as he said that Heidegger didn't go far enough with dasein, I say that Nancy doesn't go far enough with mitsein: There is a necessity for recognition of other being(s) in order to confirm our own being. I am not going to being to try and form some metaphysical or epistemological theory as to how this recognition occurs or can be proved. But, I do know that when being comes into proximity with other being a response is demanded. This is surely tinged with Levinas' take on hospitality: the face of the Other necessitates a response, but again, I think the pull is stronger, I think there is a more visceral recognition of being that requires response. Now I don't want to get all New Age and start talking about attracting life forces and other pseudo-philosophical concepts. But I do know that being recognizes being; being is pulled to being.

So to my paper. I've been thinking a lot about hospitality, radical hospitality and what that could actually entail. While Derrida talks about it in the analogy of always answering the door because the Messiah could be at the door, I think there are other avenues of hospitality that need to be extended, explored, expanded. What about hospitality to non-human animals? I'm not talking just animal rights, or the lessening of animal cruelty, but an acceptance and attempt to understand the being that pervades both human and non-human animals. Heidegger talks about non-human animals and their related to "world" and "worldhood." Or Nature, what about opening the door to Nature instead of continuing to live and operate in a mentality that treats Nature as a means to an end, and in Kant's terms, unethically. What about the face of the dog, of the cat, the mountainside; why are these beings subsumed and treated as human utility? I know the arguments: there are no souls in Nature, animals can't reason, man has dominion over Nature. But as I see it, having a soul isn't a precondition for existence, nor is the ability to reason: when was the last time you saw a 2 week old human child act rationally? So why are these then conditions for hospitality? While none of the philosophers that I have mentioned (except for Kant) have really spelled out how animals and Nature should be treated, I would argue that a lack of philosophical treatment is just as inhospitable as blatant disregard or misuse.

It seems to me that the analytic philosophers have had the most say in environmental philosophy and ethics, and it is now time for the Continental tradition to weigh in on this topic. Surely, these questions deserve a Continental treatment that can approach from the vantage point of history, literature, and a gathering together of all being.

"Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness."

-Emerson

--Philip