cover image Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology

Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology

Andreas Weber, trans. from the German by Rory Bradley. Chelsea Green, $20 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-60358-697-9

German philosopher Weber (Biology of Wonder) centers his juicy, quietly exuberant philosophical treatise on the idea that all existence is built on the relationship between beings and a love that manifests as an anti-Platonic “pure aliveness.” The book feels intimate yet strangely impersonal. Weber sees embodied experience as essentially poetic and language as a “medium of metamorphosis between bodies and ideas.” He hopes the cultural pendulum is swinging away from an overly rigid scientific worldview and his graceful prose reflects this yearning. Weber opposes the popular idea of love as something that exists to fill a lack or be consumed, seeing that approach as antagonistic to creativity. Instead, he finds the world’s love for itself grounded in connection and gifting to others. Though Weber sees desire and longing as essential to life, there’s nothing erotic or explicitly sexual here. Weber’s ecology says little about the practicalities of humans sharing the Earth with other species, but everything about being deeply present while understanding that there’s more to life than us. [em](Sept.) [/em]