A look at the philosophy of Josef Šmajs

This article by Dan Polansky looks at the philosophy of the Czech environmental philosopher Josef Šmajs. Šmajs is notable enough to have a Czech Wikipedia page and to be recognized by Gemini.

Initial questions:

What writings by Šmajs are available online, to serve as the basis for analysis?
What articles about the philosophy of Šmajs are available online?
What key concepts are introduced by Šmajs?
What theories or doctrines are promulgated by Šmajs?

Articles are listed in the further reading. Some are in Czech, some in English.

Initial observations

Šmajs introduces the key concept of evolutionary ontology (evoluční ontologie). I failed to figure out what he means by that. He does not seem to constrain the term evolution merely to replicator-based processes such as biological and cultural evolution; he also speaks of evolution in other contexts (example quotation to be added). One can ask whether there is some relationship to Hegelian dialectics.

Šmajs is concerned with destruction of environment by humans and with the risk of human extinction. He seems to believe that non-human biological entities should have some of the human rights.

Šmajs seems to suggest that a solution of environmental problems is to be sought more in what he calls společenské vědy (social sciences) than in physical and other natural sciences. Into společenské vědy (social sciences) he seems to include philosophy, a classification not matching the usual Anglophone one, by which philosophy is not a social science but a branch of humanities. He seems to be saying that the solution is to be found by philosophy.

Šmajs seems to use the term culture (kultura) to refer to totality of all currently human cultures. He posits a contrast of nature vs. culture. He seems to see culture as "predatory", or at least today's culture. It is not clear whether his use of the term matches customary uses in Anglophone cultural anthropology. One sentence suggests that culture is the same thing as technosphere: "Člověkem vytvářená globální kultura – planetární technosféra – se totiž osamostatňuje, vymyká se lidským záměrům a střetává se starší, svébytnější a sofistikovanější planetární biosférou."^[1]

Nature vs. culture

Šmajs presents culture as being pitched against nature. I am not clear this is the best approach. My approach is that of technosphere vs. biosphere. There are two key differences:

It is unclear why the entity of concern should be culture rather than technology. Since, pre-technological cultures of humans did not seem to significantly impact the natural environment. Pre-technological would mean pre-fire. Even medieval cultures (and thus agricultural ones) were unable to cause the scale of destruction matching the industrial societies. Moreover, and that is perhaps not so important, a lay person will perhaps not readily understand the concept of culture that Šmajs invokes, which includes technology as it part. When Popper speaks of Technik als Kulturfaktor (or something of the sort), he does not take technology to be automatically part of culture, or else his point would trivially follow from definition. This is especially clear in Czech context; one would be surprised to find a technological museum under the head of Dům kultury (house of culture).
It is unclear that the concept of nature--any nature--is the best pick for the conflict to be analyzed. Popper analyses technology as pitched against the grüne Natur, meaning biological nature. And biological nature is the one that seems most gravely impacted by the industrial civilization. That is to say, for one thing, extraterrestrial nature (galaxies, etc.) is not impacted almost at all (one could count near-Earth space debris as extraterrestrial impact, though). And even terrestrial non-biological nature sees relatively little impact from industrial technological societies; there are quarries and reservoires, but they do not seem to achieve a scale that would mean anything like a grave destruction of landscape.

On the other hand, Šmajs does use the technosphere vs. biosphere contrast in the title "Dokážeme smířit technosféru s biosférou?"^[2]. Therefore, the issue raised (about nature vs. culture) applies to some of his writing but not all of it.

Culture being predatory

As for the culture being predatory, it is unclear why that alone should be a bad thing: predatory relationships are widespread in biological nature. Thus, a tiger eats an antelope, but that does not make the tiger bad. Sure enough, there are problems with the technosphere in relation to biological and other nature, but it is unclear that the concept of predation is the best one to point to these problems, or even an applicable one. One can admit that the word predatory is often used pejoratively to refer to certain social interpersonal phenomena deemed harmful or unjust. But that does not seem to be the phenomenon under discussion; rather, culture or technosphere is described as predatory in relation to nature. Thus, to make a wooden chair from a cut tree is to be predatory with respect to that tree. But from an environmentalist perspective, a culture that makes wooden pieces of furniture and wooden houses, even if it is "predatory" with respect to the trees, does not on this account alone present an environmental problem.

Predatory spiritual paradigm

Šmajs talks about predátorské duchovní paradigma, which I translate as predatory spiritual paradigm. The translation of duchovní as spiritual is perhaps tentative; it stands in contrast to duševní, mental. It remains to be figured out what, if anything, is this predatory spiritual paradigm, and what makes it spiritual. (As an aside, paradigm is an overused sociological buzzword originally stemming from Kuhn's classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions. From what I recall, Ms. Masterman identified 21 meanings/ways in which Kuhn used the word.)

Ontic

Šmajs uses the word ontický, which could be rendered into English as ontic. M-W defines ontic as "of, relating to, or having real being".^[3] I am struggling to make sense of Šmajs' sentences using the word. The Czech word ontický is absent from Czech dictionaries PSJČ and SSJČ and is absent from the website IJP. It would seem reasonable to require Šmajs to define the term (given the absence in dictionaries), but he does not seem to do so. cojeco.cz defines ontický as 'spekulativní pojem německého filozofa M. Heideggera označující vše, co náleží „jsoucnu“, na rozdíl od pojmu „ontologický“, jímž vyjadřuje vztah k „bytí“'^[4]. If Šmajs has this meaning in mind, he would do well to say to.

Exploitation of natural forces

Šmajs talks of "vědeckotechnické vykořisťování přírodních sil" (science-technological exploitation of natural forces), e.g. here: "Vysoká produktivita práce, založená na přímém vědeckotechnickém vykořisťování přírodních sil, nutně vede k nadměrné saturaci méně naléhavých abiotických potřeb lidí, tj. i k novým způsobům jejich uspokojování, podněcování a vytváření."^[5] To my mind, the Czech word vykořisťování, which is used in Marxists philosophy in relation to capitalists and laborers, seems unduly pejorative, perhaps even more so than the English exploitation. A less charged word could be využití. To my mind, vykořisťování reads as if the natural forces were cast/interpreted as a person suffering from the yoke of technosphere. For instace, building a dam and a hydro powerplant would be such an exploitation. I struggle to find the "poor" gravitational force acting on water properly understood as a poor/unfortunate exploited person. Similarly, I struggle to interpret wind as a person exploited (vykořisťována) by a windmill. At least in Czech, vykořisťování sounds very anthropomorphic and negative, relating to kořist (prey or spoils).

A search for "vykořisťování přírodních sil" in Google finds nearly exclusively texts from Šmajs.

A search for "vykořisťování přírody" in Google and Google Books finds a broad range of sources, some apparently environmentalist.

A search for "exploitation of natural forces" finds, among others, the following quotation from Marx: "This Prometheus of M. Proudhon's is a queer character, as weak in logic as in political economy. So long as Prometheus merely teaches us the division of labour, the application of machinery, the exploitation of natural forces and scientific power, multiplying the productive forces of men and giving a surplus compared with the produce of labour in isolation, this new Prometheus has the misfortune only of coming too late."^[6]

A search for "exploitation of nature" finds a range of sources, many of which seem to be environmentalist. The phase does not seem positive.

A search for "Ausbeutung der Natur" finds a range of sources, showing the phrase to be common. German Ausbeutung, in Marx, corresponds to Czech vykořisťování. German Beute corresponds to Czech kořist.

English exploit has, according to M-W, two senses, one neutral ("to make productive use of"), one negative ("to make use of meanly or unfairly [...]").^[7] This suggests that the ideological effect of English exploitation is rather different from that of Czech vykořisťování. The neutral (or even positive) sense of exploit could probably be translated as využití or vytěžení, and imperfective využívání and vytěžování.

To get the ideological effect of Czech vykořisťování and German Ausbeutung, we could consider outpraying or outspoiling (and thus plunder).

We see the following candidate metaphors:

Humans and their technological culture are beast of prey, predators (such as a tiger or wolf); nature (including mineral ores) is prey.
Humans and their technological culture are plunderers; nature (including mineral ores) is store of goodies to be plundered.

The etymology of English exploit does not suggest anything remotely relating to kořist (prey or spoil).^[8]