Freya Mathews

Freya Mathews in 2018

Freya Mathews FAHA is an Australian environmental philosopher whose main work has been in the areas of ecological metaphysics and panpsychism. Her current special interests are in ecological civilization; indigenous (Australian and Chinese) perspectives on "sustainability" and how these perspectives may be adapted to the context of contemporary global society; panpsychism and critique of the metaphysics of modernity; and wildlife ethics and rewilding in the context of the Anthropocene.

Mathews has been teaching in Australian universities since 1979. She currently holds the post of Adjunct Professor of Environmental Philosophy at La Trobe University. Mathews is the author of several books and over seventy articles on ecological philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. In addition to her research activities she manages a private biodiversity reserve in northern Victoria, Australia. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Works

Mathews's philosophy features a holistic approach to environmental ethics with a metaphysical basis. Particularly, she draws from Baruch Spinoza's notion of "ethic of interconnectedness", which treats the features of the natural world as attributes of the same underlying substance. Her advocacy of ontopoetics, which she described as meaningful communicative exchanges between self and the world, is an aspect to this philosophical view. She also promotes a kind of ecocentrism to address and sustain inconvenient, and time-consuming conservation practice.

Selected publications

• The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991. Reissued 1993; paperback 1994
• For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, SUNY Press, Albany, 2003
• Journey to the Source of the Merri, Ginninderra Press, Canberra, 2003
• Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture, SUNY Press, Albany, 2005
• Ardea: a Philosophical Novella, Punctum Books, New York, 2016
• Without Animals Life is not Worth Living, Ginninderra Press, Adelaide, 2016

See also

• Deep Ecology
• Panpsychism
• Sigurd Zienau

Further reading

External links

• Freya Mathews' homepage
• Kate Rigby (2006), "Minding (about) Matter: On the Eros and Anguish of Earthly Encounter." A review essay engaging with Freya Mathews' two recent titles: For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism and Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture in Australian Humanities Review, Volume 28.
• Book Review of Reinhabiting Reality Trumpeter, Vol 24, No 3 (2008)
• Book review of For Love of Matter Archived 16 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine
• Soren Brier, "Trust in the Order of Things", review of The Ecological Self, Systems Practice, 9,4, 1996 pp 377–385
• Bonnett, M 2002, 'Education for sustainability as a frame of mind' Environmental Education Research, vol 8, no. 1, pp. 9–20
• Book review of The Ecological Self on the Panexperientialim blog
• A post on the Guide to Reality blog about The Ecological Self
• Entry on Freya Mathews in Julie Newman (ed), Green Ethics and Philosophy: an A – Z Guide, Sage, 2011

Books

• B. Baxter, Ecologism: An Introduction (Georgetown University Press, 2000), pp 16–33, 58-79.
• E. de Jonge, Spinoza and Deep Ecology: Challenging Traditional Approaches to Environmentalism (Routledge, 2016), Ch. 3.
• J. Franklin, Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia (Macleay Press, 2003), ch. 13.