David Abram's The Spell Of The Sensuous

Animals are slaughtered for food, forests are destroyed and replaced with cities, and the Earth’s crust is constantly ripped apart in order to access fossil fuels. These atrocities are commonplace in the Western Culture, and it is easy for many of us to turn a blind eye because they do not have a negative impact on us; rather, they make our lives even easier. This anthropocentric viewpoint is a danger that philosopher David Abram discusses in his text, The Spell of the Sensuous, as he denounces “the Great Chain of Being” because that mode of thinking creates a barrier between us as humans and the natural world that needs to be broken.
In Abram’s book, he proposes the question: “How, that is, have we become so deaf and so blind to the vital existence of the other species, and to the animate landscapes they inhabit, that we now so casually bring about their destruction?” (28). That question resonated with me because I have not been able to derive an answer. When Abram left for Bali, he left behind the beliefs of the Western culture – including “the Great Chain of Being”, a hierarchical continuum that places man above everything except angels and God – and immersed himself into the natural …show more content…
He finally felt like he was alive, and at home. If the state of connectedness with the natural world is so fulfilling, then why did mankind deviate so far from it? Our false sense of superiority shown in “the Great Chain of Being” not only

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