Presuming a nature in the context of resilience

Abstract

Over the last decades, the debate on climate change has brought back the everlasting discussion on the conceptualization of nature and the delimitation of our relationship with it. The emergence of „destruction“ has been instrumental in transforming moral evil to natural, viz the transition from the mechanistic-instrumental view of nature to a romantic one, where the superiority of “logos” over nature is now reversed. In the context of this conceptual shift, the rhetoric of „security“ was raised, and today is mainly expressed through the mechanisms of „mechanistic resilience“, namely the persistence in an ideal, almost a metaphysical equilibrium state of functioning of all biotic and abiotic systems. However, at the same time and in the context of ecological science, in recent decades, parallel transformations have also occurred in the notion of “resilience”. The latter is no longer defined on the basis of maintaining a balance, but rather adapting to lasting change (part of which is the “destruction”) which is recognized as a structural element of all natural and non- natural processes. If faith in the equilibrium tried to respond to a “revengeful nature” or a nature perceived as danger then which nature responds to adaptation? Accepting the latter as the new state of optimum functioning means that we must accept a new notion of evil that stems from the theory of resilience but ultimately expands to the „construction“ of a nature.