Singularity of Things
As an awareness of the Anthropocene drives us to reconsider the relationships of subject-object and human-nature, the OOO challenges the way that we perceive objects but also their very nature. For philosopher Timothy Morton, things can not be reduced to the fact of belonging to, or having effects on, other things, but rather possess an inherent uniqueness, existence and value. He also refutes that thought – scientific data for example – constitutes a privileged way of accessing objects, in relation to meaning for example. Treating non-human beings as ontologically equal, the OOO is for Morton the only western philosophy that embodies the promise of a profound non-violence towards oneself and others. The ecosystem, this set of relationships between creatures, itself forms an object, with the question becoming the nature of this system of interconnections, that he estimates as being of the order of symbiosis, an interplay of alliances with no notion of domination.
