DePaul University

Department Member, Institute for Nature and Culture

Other Affiliations: University of Nottingham, Theology and Religious Studies

Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer

About

I've recently received my PhD after completing and defending my doctoral thesis entitled "Ecologies of Thought: Thinking Nature in Philosophy, Theology, and Ecology". The thesis constructs a theory of nature that is adequate to the scientific practices of ecology and derived from philosophical and theological sources or materials. This theory avoids thinking nature through pre-existing philosophical systems like naturalism and materialism. It also avoids thinking nature through pre-existing theological dogmas where the practice of ecology is subordinated to a need for orthodoxy. These forms of thought confuse nature with the World by thinking nature through the play of veiling and unveiling, presence and absence. In distinction, the theory of nature developed in the thesis is cast under the axiom that nature is perverse and develops from there using the method of François Laruelle’s non-philosophy. This method re-organizes the division of labour between philosophy and science and, through the creation in the thesis of a corollary non-theology, the relationship between theology and science. Laruelle calls this re-organization a democracy (of) thought, where the relational “of” is suspended so that what is referred to here is a truly immanent identity of democracy and thought. I contend that we can also think of an ecology (of) thought, where thinking, including thinking about nature, is shown to be already ecologically at work. This means that by thinking philosophically and theologically through scientific concepts we can begin to disempower standard debates about nature and begin to treat the terms of these debates as simple ecological materials. By reading Aquinas, Spinoza, al-Sijistânî, and al-Ṭūsī through this ecological method I am able to construct a theory of nature that remains perverse, but does not hide. This theory can be summarized as having a tripartite structure that understands the creatural as subject of nature, the chimera of God or nature as non-thetic transcendence of nature, and the One as radical immanence of nature.

Currently I am a research fellow at DePaul University's Institute for Nature and Culture (Chicago, USA) and an adjunct professor teaching religious studies, philosophy, and environmental studies.

My main research interests, which often come together, are philosophy of religion (and philosophies that consider specific religions, i.e. philosophies of Christianity and philosophies of Islam in particular) and philosophy of nature/environmental philosophy. I'm the translator of François Laruelle's "Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy" (Continuum, 2010), co-translator with Nicola Rubczak of François Laruelle's "Principles of Non-Philosophy" (Continuum, 2013), and the co-editor with Daniel Whistler of "After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion" (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010). My next project will be an introduction to the non-philosophy of François Laruelle. I have a long term research project with the working title "Summa Non-Theologica". I'm also interested in critical animal studies, philosophy/religion and film, and political thought (including political theology, Leftist thought and Marxism).

I regularly blog on these topics at An und für sich. You may find an updated CV, with links to articles available online and audio files of papers, there: http://itself.wordpress.com/cvs/smith-cv/

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