Stefanie Buchenau, Andrea Mina und Nicola Bertoldi: Oecologie. The German Sources of Ecology

Stefanie Buchenau, Andrea Mina und Nicola Bertoldi (Université de Sorbonnes Nouvelle, Paris)

The lecture will present the ERC AdG research project „Oecologie. The German Sources of Ecology“ (2025-2030)External link

Originally, ecology was more than a biological subdiscipline. When Ernst Haeckel coined the term in 1866, he envisioned a broader philosophical project rooted in German anthropology and aesthetics. The ERC-funded Oecologie project seeks to recover this neglected dimension by tracing its philosophical sources. It examines Haeckel’s concepts of oikos (habitat) and oikeiosis (adaptation), highlighting the shift from viewing nature through an external deity to understanding the organism’s own capacities for adaptation. The project also explores the human role in this ecology, its links to 19th-century European evolutionism, and its intellectual debts to thinkers such as Kant, Humboldt, and Goethe. Combining conceptual history, philosophy, history of science, aesthetics, and philology, it evaluates the relevance of this framework for contemporary environmental debates.