The Logos of the Living World

This book puts Merleau-Ponty's philosophy into dialogue with literature, evolutionary biology, and animal studies to argue for evolutionary continuity between human cultural and linguistic behaviors and the semiotic activities of other animals. It restores our species to its place within the co-evolved animal community now threatened by environmental change.

Westling Louise :

Louise Westling is Professor of English and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon.

—Wendy Wheeler:
We are in the midst of a profound change, affecting both science and philosophy, in our ways of understanding the natural and cultural worlds. Louise Westling’s important new book The Logos of the Living World shows us a part of the intertwining history of that change as it emerges not only in the natural history of our mythic life but also in the scientifically-informed work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. What may appear retrospectively as Kuhnian “paradigm shifts” in the history of knowledge always have also an often semi-hidden history of continuities. Westling shows how those continuities appearing in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty are an important part of the path of inquiry which leads also to an understanding of the intelligence of the living world which finds its scientific expression in the development of biosemiotics. The Logos of the Living World is essential reading for all those interested in the science and philosophy which will emerge from the wreckage of the dominant but exhausted assumptions of Western modernity.

Chris Wilbert:
An outstanding characteristic of Westling's text is its spotlight on Merleau-Ponty's lifelong engagement with the advanced sciences of his day and his anticipation of current discussions relevant to animal and literary studies.

—Lawrence Buell:
A luminous and wide-ranging inquiry into biosemiotic expression as the distinguishing mark of cross-species affinity, informed by a searching interpretation of the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty as a model for conceiving that affinity. At both levels, The Logos of the Living World delivers significant fresh insights potentially of great significance for the future of ecocritcism.

A central thesis of Louise Westling's highly accomplished and provocative 'The Logos of the Living World: Merleau-Ponty, Animals, and Language' is that 'human language and aesthetic behaviors emerge from our animality.' What is perhaps most compelling about her thesis is that she supports it by exploring how an evolutionary continuity between an always already languaged world and human being-in-the-world can be understood without having to employ dangerous (il) logic of social Darwinism or some schools of evolutionary psychology and without having to serve as yet another iteration of a naive 'metaphysical of presence'.

“The Logos of the Living World provides an innovative and intriguing application of Merleau-Ponty’s thought to the question of how animals and humans can inhabit the same planet, while displaying diverse forms of communication.”

—Glen Mazis:
“For the first time, I believe, this book supplies the proper larger context of interdisciplinary work where Merleau-Ponty’s insights take on their full meaning.”

Louise Westling's groundbreaking study reevaluates French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's writings on the basis of his myriad contributions to ecocriticism, animal studies, and biosemiotics, and reveals that he anticipated debates that continue to mark the environmental humanities.