The Sensorial, Biocentric Philosophy of Michel Serres and Michel Onfray: Rehabilitating the Human Body

Abstract

Abstract:Based upon their conviction that dominant thought paradigms in Western civilization are guilty of overrationalizing the human agent, the unorthodox contemporary philosophers Michel Serres and Michel Onfray attempt to rehabilitate the human body. These encyclopedic epistemologists, who have a marked predilection for scientific explanations of the world and our place in it, deconstruct extreme philosophical positions that correspond to the pervasive doctrine of rationalism. Adopting a rhizomatic vision of knowledge, Serres and Onfray maintain that the human body is one integrated organism in which everything works together in tandem enabling the subject to find meaning in a universe in which nothing has any pre-determined or fixed essence. Urging us to (re-)establish a direct, sensorial connection to the "world of things" to which everything including homo sapiens belongs by honing our deadened senses that have been numbed by the modern lifestyle and the ongoing evolutionary process they refer to as "hominisation," Serres and Onfray advocate in favor of an all-encompassing sensorial, hedonistic, biocentric ethic. In the current Anthropocene epoch, both philosophers convincingly demonstrate that the implementation of an ecocentric ethos linked to somatic communions with the rest of the material world could hold the key to averting the impending anthropogenic crisis.