Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2020
Abstract
This article examines the philosophical issues that arise when preserving urban geological sites or urban geosites. These are preserved not only because of their geological value but also because of aesthetic, cultural, and economic reasons. To do so, it examines the geosite constituted by Olot and its surroundings, a city in Spain that extends amid four dormant volcanoes. It explores the metaphysical paradox that these geosites have become what they are due to the preservation of destruction: humancaused interventions, mostly extraction of materials and exploitation of the land, are precisely what made these geosites visible as sites worth preserving and determining their metaphysical status. It further explores the preservation criteria and shows how they have determined the status of the geosite. Second, it shows how in such urban geosites the collapse of two diametrically opposed conceptions of time – the geological eon and the lived human time – occurs. Lastly, it discusses aesthetic aspects of such geosites by considering aesthetic experience as a primarily cognitive endeavor and shows how metaphysical, epistemological, and aesthetic issues of preservation of geosites are inextricably linked.
Recommended Citation
Capdevila-Werning, R. (2020). Preserving Destruction: Philosophical Issues of Urban Geosites, Open Philosophy, 3(1), 550-565. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0137
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Open Philosophy
DOI
10.1515/opphil-2020-0137
Comments
© 2020 Remei Capdevila-Werning, published by De Gruyter.