ABSTRACT
Object-oriented ontology (OOO) supports an alternative approach to climate ethics, a non-anthropocentrism of things themselves. Ontology—the branch of philosophy that studies “being” — might sound like an intellectual distraction from urgent problems. For Harman, every object is a fourfold that is split along one axis into the withdrawal of the real and the relational interactions of the sensuous and along another axis between objects and their qualities, thus rendering a quadruple object. Preserving the irreducibility of objects, OOO avoids two kinds of reductionism, “undermining” and “overmining,” which can combine into “duomining.” OOO makes a speculative claim that every object has some kind of subjectivity, some way of touching other entities and not merely being touched by them. OOO affirms the unique differences of all beings, and it flattens the walls that are used to categorically separate human beings from all other beings. Undoing the privileged ontological status of humans, OOO is a “flat ontology.”
